Server

• Linux-driven router/gateway unleashes 5G NR

  Advantech’s rugged “ICR-4453” 5G NR (New Radio) router runs Conel OS Linux on a Cortex-A72 SoC with 5x GbE ports, an SFP cage, 2x mini-PCIe, 2x SIM, and USB, serial, and CAN connections.

  Advantech has announced a Linux-driven router and gateway equipped with a 5G NR (New Radio) modem. 3GPP’s 5G NR spec is a faster air interface for 5G compared to the 4G LTE infrastructure used by most 5G networks. Supporting extensions of 5G beyond 6GHz, 5G NR is particularly useful for low-latency “massive IoT” applications. (See farther below for more on 5G NR.)

• Kubernetes 1.20 Launched

  Kubernetes has released version 1.20, featuring 42 enhancements, with 11 enhancements graduating to stable, 15 moving to beta, and 16 entering alpha.

• Kubernetes 1.20: Granular Control of Volume Permission Changes | Kubernetes

  Kubernetes 1.20 brings two important beta features, allowing Kubernetes admins and users alike to have more adequate control over how volume permissions are applied when a volume is mounted inside a Pod.

• Tomasz Torcz: k3s is tiny and cute

  After KubeCon I’ve decided to give k3s a try. And I’m impressed!

  K3s is a small distribution of Kubernetes (k8s), Linux container orchestrator system. It’s really tiny while being functional. One starts with a single 52MiB binary and after few seconds there’s a functional installation with half a dozen of system pods. It’s a far cry from OKD and its resource hunger. Of course, compared to OKD, there’s much less functionality in k3s, but enough for most cases (including mine).

  First, I’m writing now, because only recently cgroupsv2 support was added to k3s. Previously it just didn’t work on modern systems, like Fedora.

  Second, the etcd database, widely perceived as a mandatory part of k8s, is optional in k3s! By default embedded SQLite is used – enough for simple scenarios. I’m particularly happy for Postgresql support. Yes, you can have your Kubernetes working with pgsql.

  But K3s is not a single-node solution only. Adding worker nodes is simple; High-Availability solutions for control-plane looks sound (haven’t tried yet, but it’s on my TODO).

Audiocasts/Shows

• What Is Matrix: Why You Should Be Using It – YouTube

  I’ve been using Matrix for a few weeks now so I thought I’d chat about what it actually, how it works with features like bridging or just general message sharing and why I absolutely believe that you’re next chat should at least be bridged to Matrix

• Looking At My Doom Emacs Config – DT LIVE – YouTube

  I’ve been playing a bit with my Doom Emacs configuration, so I thought I would go through my config files and explain what I’m doing. This could prove to be quite educational to those of you that are new to Emacs in general and especially Doom Emacs.

• LHS Episode #384: Goodbye, 2020 | Linux in the Ham Shack

  Hello and welcome to Episode 384 of Linux in the Ham Shack. In this final episode of 2020, we invite listeners to join us via Discord for a discussion of amateur radio, technology, open source software and hardware and the year in review. We also make some predictions for 2021 and depart into hedonism for a while as well. We hope you enjoy this community-driven content, have a safe and happy holiday season and join us again when we re-start the show on January 7, 2021.

• CentOS Streams, Cyberpunk 2077 on Linux, Qt 6.0, Flatpak App Store | This Week in Linux 129

  On this episode of This Week in Linux, we’ve got some interesting and somewhat Rocky news for CentOS to talk about. There’s a new Flatpak App Store released this week called Souk. Linux Gaming news with Cyberpunk 2077 running on Linux thanks to Proton. We’ve also got many new releases this week from PAPPL 1.0, OpenRGB, Qt 6.0 toolkit, CRUX Linux, and QEMU. Then we’ll round out the show with some great deals from Humble Bundle. All that and much more coming up right now on Your Weekly Source for Linux GNews!

Kernel Space

• Linus Torvalds: ‘Nothing that looks scary’ in important new Linux kernel 5.10

  Linux creator Linus Torvalds has announced version 5.10 of the Linux kernel with a bunch of driver updates and a message to developers to hold off submitting further fixes until 2020′s Covid-stricken holiday season is over.

  Linux 5.10 is a big release because it’s the latest kernel with long-term support (LTS), meaning it will be supported for at least two years. But often LTS versions end up with six years’ support.

• SD Times news digest: Linux 5.10 released, GrammaTech’s DARPA research contract, and ML Kit Entity Extraction
  

  Linux 5.10 has been released. In the new version, most of the patches are small, Linus Torvalds explained in a post.The biggest change is fixed pin mapping definitions for a pincontrol driver.

  The fixes span networking, architecture, filesystems, and tooling. Torvalds also noted that the merge window for 5.11 will start tomorrow and that for the release he will be strict about the merging only thighs that are ready before the merge window starts.

• GNU Linux-Libre 5.10 Kernel Released for Those Who Seek 100% Freedom for Their PCs

  Based on the Linux 5.10 LTS kernel series, the GNU Linux-libre 5.10 kernel is now available for the GNU/Linux community to deblob any proprietary code and drivers from the upstream kernel release, providing us with a 100% free/libre kernel.

  This release introduces deblobbing for a new firmware-loading primitive introduced in Linux kernel 5.10 LTS, disables new blobs in the AMDGPU open-source graphics driver for AMD GPUs and the Intel i915 video and Bluetooth HCI drivers, as well as in the Quallcomm ath11k, Intel iwlwifi, IMX SDMA, and MLXSW Spectrum drivers.

• GNU Linux-libre 5.10-gnu After A Busy Time Deblobbing

  Following yesterday’s release of the Linux 5.10 LTS kernel the GNU folks have released their “GNU Linux-libre 5.10-gnu” downstream that is the Linux kernel but without support for loading proprietary modules as well as preventing closed-source firmware binaries from being loaded on the system and related steps in the name of free software.

  GNU Linux-libre 5.10-gnu remains popular in the FSF-endorsed distribution circles like Hyperbola, Trisequel, and GNU Guix, but for most modern hardware out there is simply won’t work or less than optimally without the closed-source firmware/microcode support or in some cases missing out on security updates for hardware as a result.

• GNU Linux-libre 5.10-gnu

  GNU Linux-libre 5.10-gnu cleaning-up scripts, cleaned-up sources, and
  cleaning-up logs (including tarball signatures) are now available from
  our git-based release archive git://linux-libre.fsfla.org/releases.git/
  tags {scripts,sources,logs}/v5.10-gnu.
  
  Tarballs and incremental patches are also published at
  <https://www.fsfla.org/selibre/linux-libre/download/releases/5.10-gnu/>.
  
  
  The scripts are unchanged since first published for this cycle, last
  weekend.
  
  This was a reasonably busy cycle.  A new firmware-loading primitive was
  introduced upstream, precompiled bpf code was added to the upstream tree
  along with corresponding sources; amdgpu had tree rearrangements beside
  the usual addition of new blobs; Intel i915 video and bluetooth hci
  drivers request new blobs (disabled); firmware loading was disabled in
  newly-added drivers for Cadence MHDP8546 DPI/DP bridge and for Marvell
  Prestera switch; IMX SDMA, MLXSW Spectrum; Intel iwlwifi; Quallcomm
  ath11k; Broadcom STM DPFE memory and Intel Haswell and HiFi2 sound had
  some rearrangement in their blob loading code; new blobs have been
  disabled in qcom aarch64 ports.
  
  
  
  For up-to-the-minute news, join us on #linux-libre of irc.gnu.org
  (Freenode), or follow me (@lxoliva) on Twister <http://twister.net.co/>,
  Secure Scuttlebutt, GNU social at social.libreplanet.org, Diaspora* at
  pod.libreplanetbr.org or pump.io at identi.ca.  Check the link in the
  signature for direct links.
  

• Kernel 5.10: Rockchip, H.264, Bifrost & more!

  Linux Kernel 5.10 has just been released, just as 2020 is about to reach its end. As Linus himself commented, this was a bigger release than expected. This underlines the enormous driving force that open software has: even amidst the chaos and the uncertainty that this year brought, Linux Kernel development keeps moving forward at a constant and relentless pace, which is reassuring and a way of keeping us grounded and mindful that the world keeps spinning.

  This version will be the next LTS release, you can find an overview of the significant changes it contains at LWN: part 1 and part 2.

  As with every release, Collabora has contributed a good number of patches and remains active developing, maintaining, documenting and testing many parts of the kernel. Here are some of our contributions.

• Collabora Shows More Love for Rockchip in Linux 5.10, Adds Bifrost GPU Support in Panfrost

  In Linux kernel 5.10 LTS, Collabora continues to show their love for the Rockchip media drivers by improving support for the RK3399 ISP driver, which is now ready for prime time and will be included by default in the upcoming Linux 5.11 kernel series, due for release in mid-February 2021.

  They also added support for Mali Bifrost GPUs to the Panfrost free and open-source driver for Mali GPUs, improved support for the V4L2 (Video4Linux) H.264 uAPI by cleaning and stabilizing it to make it ready for mainstream.

• Linus Torvalds launches Linux kernel 5.10, warns devs not to send 5.11 code too close to Christmas

  Linus Torvalds has released version 5.10 of the Linux kernel and given developers working on the project a pre-Christmas deadline to get their desired additions for 5.11 into his inbox.

  Torvalds’ release announcement for version 5.10 stated: “I pretty much always wish that the last week was even calmer than it was, and that’s true here too.” But as nothing in the release made him feel an extra week would be truly necessary, the new kernel was let loose upon a waiting world and the project avoided the holiday season collision that the Linux overseer feared in late November.

  But Christmas is not completely saved: Torvalds has given kernel devs a strict timetable for submitting changes for version 5.11.

• Linux 5.10.1

  I'm announcing the release of the 5.10.1 kernel.
  
  All users of the 5.10 kernel series must upgrade.
  
  The updated 5.10.y git tree can be found at:
  	git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-5.10.y
  and can be browsed at the normal kernel.org git web browser:
  
  https://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-s...
  
  thanks,
  
  greg k-h
  

• Linux 5.10 Didn’t Even Last 24 Hours… Linux 5.10.1 Released Due To Bugs

  It was just yesterday evening — less than 24 hours ago — that Linux 5.10 LTS was released but already the first point release has arrived due to bugs in the storage code.

  Linux 5.10.1 as the first point release normally doesn’t arrive for a few days or week after the initial kernel debut, but this time around it’s coming one day later.

  Linux 5.10.1 has just two fixes, both of which affect the storage code. There is a revert of a prior “fix” around RAID DISCARD limits for RAID1 and RAID10 within the Device Mapper code. The commit simply mentions “It causes problems :(.” The other is fixing the MD code’s chunk sectors variable from being an unsigned int to just an int, also on the basis that “it causes problems :(.” The later MD code change ended up breaking mounting of at least RAID6 setups under Linux 5.10 and was quickly noticed by upstream developers when moving to the final kernel release.

• Btrfs Has Many Nice Improvements, Better Performance With Linux 5.11

  The first set of major file-system material submitted for the newly opened Linux 5.11 merge window are the Btrfs updates.

• After Years Of Work With 40+ Revisions, Intel SGX Looks Like It Will Land In Linux 5.11

  Assuming Linus Torvalds has no last minute objections, the long-in-development Intel SGX support will be merged into the mainline Linux kernel.

• SD Express Support Coming With The Linux 5.11 Kernel – Phoronix

  Earlier this year work began on preparing SD Express card/host support for Linux and now with the Linux 5.11 kernel that will debut in early 2021 is this preliminary support.

  SD Express promises faster transfer speeds thanks to support for PCI Express 4.0 and the NVMe 1.4 protocol. SD Express is to come to SDHC/SDXC/SDUC memory cards while retaining backwards compatibility with the legacy SD card interface. The Linux kernel needed to be adapted obviously and first initialize with the legacy SD interface and then checking host/card support for PCIe/NVMe support before making the connection upgrade.

• Multimedia and Graphics Stack

  • Allwinner “Cedrus” Media Driver Finally Sees Support For VP8 Decode

    Linux’s Cedrus media driver that provides video decoding on various Allwinner SoCs is finally seeing support added for VP8. But given this addition for Linux 5.11 won’t be out as stable until well into 2021 and most of the world has moved onto VP9, it may not be too beneficial at this stage.

    The Cedrus media driver has been working out well for various Allwinner SoCs and supporting the likes of H.264/H.265 decoding. But with Linux 5.11 is the ability to handle VP8 content. Unfortunately rather late for mainline. Cedrus in Linux 5.11 is also seeing support for the Allwinner R40, V3s, and other improvements.

  • Mike Blumenkrantz: New Strategy

    Today’s exploratory morning post is about sampling from stencil buffers.

    What is sampling from stencil buffers, some of you might be asking.

    Sampling in general is the reading of data from a resource. It’s most commonly used as an alternative to using a Copy command for transferring some amount of data from one resource to another in a specified way.

    For example, extracting only stencil data from a resource which combines both depth and stencil data. In zink, this is an important operation because none of the Copy commands support multisampled resources containing both depth and stencil data, an OpenGL feature that the unit tests most certainly cover.

    As with all things, zink has a tough time with this.

  • Intel Xe MAX Needs Two Linux Kernels For Now – Meaning You Need To Use A GPU-Accelerated VM

    Back in October Intel announced Iris Xe MAX as discrete graphics for laptops. The overall Linux state for Xe MAX hasn’t been too clear and we haven’t had any hardware access to this Intel laptop discrete graphics hardware to report our own findings, but their developers have now cleared up the situation. The good news is the Xe MAX graphics can be used for a GPU-accelerated Linux virtual machine. The bad news is the Xe MAX support doesn’t yet allow for dGPU usage by the host outside of a virtual machine context as it needs “two different [Linux] kernels” for operation in conjunction with the integrated graphics.

Applications

• Terminal Emulators in Linux

  As a Linux user, you might have come across the terminology ‘terminal emulator’. Automatically, you might be tempted to think that a terminal emulator is synonymous with the terminal. While these two are similar in almost every sense, a few subtle differences exist between these two.

  What is a terminal emulator in Linux

  The terminal emulator or simply TERM is an application that mimics or emulates the functionalities of a conventional terminal window. It is used to run shell commands, terminal-based graphical applications, and more.

  The terminal emulator allows users to connect and access remote devices such as servers, routers and other PCs via command line using protocols such as SSH or telnet. Once connected or logged in to the host system, a user can perform administrative tasks such as installing, configuring, and running applications as well as carrying out file transfer between the host and the remote system.

  Some emulators such as Terminix and terminator have a tiling feature allowing you to split multiple terminal sessions in one terminal window. You can easily switch from one terminal session to another and even split the terminal horizontally or vertically.

• Bootterm – a developer-friendly serial terminal program

  There are plenty of terminal programs to access the serial console from minicom or screen to Putty. But Willy Tarreau was not quite happy with those tools, so he decided to write his own: Bootterm.

  [...]

  Bootterm C program is still under development, and Willy plans to implement automatic speed switching and macros.

• Taskline: manage your tasks with style

  If you are a digital minimalist, you are most likely using or at least tried Taskwarrior; a command-line minimal yet features-rich to-do app.

  Taskline is a new stylish successor for Taskwarrior with less complicated learning curve. Taskline turns your terminal into a powerful task management tool without a hustle.

  Unlike Taskwarrior, It features board and timeline view with a set of useful features that include backup option and better control over tasks list.

  It’s a minimal lightweight application that does not require extensive hardware resources to run.

• TreeSheets – free form data organizer

  Linux offers a vast collection of open source small utilities that perform functions ranging from the obvious to the bizarre. It’s the quality and selection of these tools that help Linux stand out as a productive environment. A good utility cooperates with other applications, integrating seamlessly.

  It has often been said that information confers power, and that the most important currency in our culture today is information. Keeping track of bits and pieces of information is a minefield.

  In part, this is because of passable short term memory, coupled with what can only be described as ‘brain fog’. To combat this, we arm myself with open source software that helps us efficiently capture a lot of information. We generally prefer to keep our information local and cloud-free, primarily for security reasons. And we primarily advance software which doesn’t tie itself to any specific company or service, whether it’s Evernote, Google, or Microsoft.

  TreeSheets is an open source tool that organizes data. The developer claims it’s suitable for any kind of data organization, such as todo lists, calendars, project management, brainstorming, organizing ideas, planning, requirements gathering, presentation of information, and more.

• Version 3.0 of QSoas is out

  After almost two years of development, version 3.0 of QSoas is finally out ! It brings in a number of new features.

Instructionals/Technical

• 4 Easy Ways to Remove/Delete a PPA on Ubuntu

  We are all software hunters and would like to immediately check out the updated app to get new features.

  Most distributors do not have this feature due to the standard release path.

  But this feature is present in Ubuntu and its derivatives because users can maintain and publish the latest software as Personal Package Archive (PPAs).

• LFCS – Logging | Linux.org

  System logging is a very important aspect of maintaining a system and monitoring it for issues. Making logs, implementing your items to log and checking those logs can help you keep systems running smoothly.

• mv command in Linux with Useful Example – TecAdmin

  mv command is used to move files from one directory to other directory. Also mv command is used to rename file in Linux systems. It is an frequently uses command by the Linux users. You must learn about mv command in Linux and its parameters.

• Set up an Ansible lab in 20 minutes | Opensource.com

  Being able to build and tear down a public cloud environment is very useful, but most of us don’t have easy access to a public cloud. The next best thing would be to have a lab on your local machine, but even running on a local machine brings performance, flexibility, and other challenges. Most of the time, the additional workloads on our local machines interfere with doing our daily job, and they certainly prevent having a readily available environment to play and experiment with new software.

  My team and I encountered this challenge a few years ago when we were starting to learn Ansible. We couldn’t find an environment that we could use individually, and our frustration with the situation caused some of us to stop experimenting. We knew we needed to find a solution.

• Adding an IP address to a Bridge | Adam Young’s Web Log

  OpenShift requires a load balancer for providing access to the hosted applications. Although I can run a three node cluster, I need a fourth location to provide a load balancer that can then provide access to the cluster.

  For my home lab set up, this means I want to run one on my bastion host….but it is already running HTTP and (FreeIPA) Red Hat IdM. I don’t want to break that. So, I want to add a second IP address to the bastion host, and have all of the existing services make use of the existing IP address. Only the new HA Proxy instance will use the new IP address.

  This would be trivial for a simple Ethernet port, but I am using a Bridge, which makes it a touch trickier, but not terribly so.

• How to Create and Manage Archive Files in Linux – Linux Foundation – Training

  In a nutshell, an archive is a single file that contains a collection of other files and/or directories. Archive files are typically used for a transfer (locally or over the internet) or make a backup copy of a collection of files and directories which allow you to work with only one file (if compressed, it has a lower size than the sum of all files within it) instead of many. Likewise, archives are used for software application packaging. This single file can be easily compressed for ease of transfer while the files in the archive retain the structure and permissions of the original files.

• How To Install Nvidia Driver on Debian 10 – idroot

  In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Nvidia Driver on Debian 10. For those of you who didn’t know, The performance of graphics processing units (GPUs) mainly depends on drivers. Ubuntu by default use open source video driver Nouveau which has limited support and features when compared with proprietary Nvidia drivers. Installing NVIDIA drivers on Ubuntu is an easy task that can be done in less than a minute. Ubuntu includes a tool that can detect the graphics card model and install the appropriate NVIDIA drivers. Alternatively, you can download and install the drivers from the NVIDIA site.

  This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you through the step by step installation of Nvidia Driver on a Debian 10 (Buster).

• How to use Zenkit To Do on Linux to support your productive life – Real Linux User

  If you are a frequent reader of this website, you will know by now that I am a fan of productivity applications, such as to do lists and Kanban boards. In recent months I have paid attention to the open source To Do applications named Planner and Super Productivity, both of which I think are superb productivity applications for Linux, with both their own specific qualities. In this new blog post I pay attention to the To Do app from Zenkit, which is an alternative to the once popular but decommissioned Wunderlist app, which is not open source and is only partly free. Although I think open source as a concept is important, I am not a closed source purist. In my opinion the availability of quality closed source applications are of great importance for a wide acceptance and a growing success of Linux on the desktop, because it can attract existing macOS and Windows users who already use these apps and just can switch over to Linux without the need to immediately search for alternatives. In this article I want to share how to use Zenkit To Do on Linux to support your productive life.

• [Video] How to install Kubuntu 20.10

  In this video, I am going to show how to install Kubuntu 20.10.

• [Video] How to Homelab Episode 3 – Planning your Network Layout – YouTube

  The “How to Homelab” series helps you plan your very own home server setup for world domination (or for even just hosting some apps). In the third episode, we look into networking and how to plan your layout.

• [Video] How to install GeForce Now on Ubuntu 20.04 – YouTube

  In this video, we are looking at how to install GeForce Now on Ubuntu 20.04.

• How to Easily Create Cron jobs in Linux with Zeit – Make Tech Easier

  Cron allows you to run commands, programs, and scripts automatically at defined points in time or on a schedule. It’s powerful, it’s light, and it’s also hard to wrap your head around. That’s why you can find front-ends that try to simplify the use of crontab, and Zeit is one of the best ones.

  Zeit’s sole goal is to make adding and managing your cron jobs very easy. With Zeit, running commands and scripts is as straightforward as adding a new entry to a task list. Let’s see how it allows you to easily create cron jobs in Linux.

• How To Install Linux Kernel 5.10 In Ubuntu / Linux Mint | Tips On UNIX

  Linus Torvalds announced the Linux Kernel 5.10 after seven weeks in development and available for general usage with new features and improvements.

  As per Linus Torvalds for Kernel 5.10

  I pretty much always wish that the last week was even calmer than it was, and that’s true here too. There’s a fair amount of fixes in here, including a few last-minute reverts for things that didn’t get fixed, but nothing makes me go “we need another week”. Things look fairly normal.

  This tutorial will be helpful for beginners to install kernel 5.10 in Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, Ubuntu 20.10, Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, and LinuxMint 19.3 /20.

• How to install Apache on Ubuntu 20.04? | LibreByte

  The Apache HTTP Server Project is a community effort to develop and maintain a “free software” HTTP server for modern operating systems (UNIX, GNU / Linux, BSD, Windows).

  In this post we’re going to configure Apache as a reverse proxy in front of PHP-FPM service.

• How to install Spotify on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS – Linux Shout

  Spotify is an audio streaming and media services provider, that allows users to listen to millions of songs on the go using the Internet. The users don’t need to download, everything is in the cloud and what they need is the Spotify client, an account with it, and of course an internet connection. In addition, you can create playlists, incorporate your own music stored locally on the PC or find out about new records, the latest charts, and news from the music scene.

  There are also ready-made playlists of different genres arranged in different categories so that users can play them according to mode or event such as “summer”, “fitness” or “romance”. “Spotify radios” are just as useful; these are playlists that match an artist or an album. The free version i.e “Spotify Free”, comes with advertisements between the tracks, if you want the ad-free version switched to “Spotify Premium. After having a subscription, you can also down download your music to your PC or mobile device such as an iPad or Android smartphone and listen to it offline.

• How To Install and Use Skype on Linux System. It’s Now Easier

  Skype is one of the most decent and reliable audio-calling, video calling, and chatting application that you can install on your Linux system without any hesitation. People have been using Skype for many purposes. Besides getting connected with your friends and family through Skype, you can also use it for professional works. Many private companies consider the Skype application to take the candidate’s interviews and presentations. As Skype is a cross-platform application, you can install it on almost every smart device. The sync speed and user interface are awe-inspiring. Installing Skype on your Linux system might give you a havoc free option to chat and call.

• How to install Stencyl 4.0 on a Chromebook

  Today we are looking at how to install Stencyl 4.0 on a Chromebook. Please follow the video/audio guide as a tutorial where we explain the process step by step and use the commands below.

• How to use ECHO command in Linux – LinuxTechLab

  Echo Command in Linux is one of the most used commands in Bash scripting. It is used to display the text that has been passed as argument for the command. Mostly it is used as a input for the next command or to send output to a file.

• Install Redis on CentOS / RHEL – The Linux GURUS

  Redis is an open-source in-memory key-value data structure store that can be used as a cache server, message broker, etc. We can use a number of data types with redis like strings, lists, maps, sets, sorted sets, HyperLogs, bitmaps, streams, and spatial indexes.

• Top 4 Simple way to install Deb file on Ubuntu

  After downloading the .deb file your thinking about how to install the package on your Ubuntu or Debian-based system.

  Not to think much We are here to guide you just follow any 5 methods to install the .deb file.

  Without taking any more time Let’s Begin.

  Method 1: How to install a .deb file using the apt command
  When you download any file .deb file from the Internet the basic way to install the application using the apt command.

• How to Deploy a Multi-Tier Application with Kubernetes

  A multi-tier application is an application distributed among more than one layer. It logically separates the operational layers. The number of layers varies with business and application requirements. In this article, we will see an application divided into 2 layers, backend and frontend layer. We will use MongoDB as a backend to store data and Python Flask as a frontend Webserver. We will deploy these two applications using deployments in Kubernetes and have services to forward requests to them.

• How to Convert CentOS 8 to CentOS Stream – idroot

  In this tutorial, we will show you how to convert CentOS 8 to CentOS Stream. For those of you who didn’t know, For those relying on CentOS 8 to enjoy the reliability and features of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 but without the licensing costs, etc, that will end in 2021. At the end of 2021, CentOS 8 will no longer be maintained but CentOS 7 will stick around in a supported maintenance state until 2024. The CentOS Project will be focused moving forward just on CentOS Stream as the upstream/development branch of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

  This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you through the step-by-step migrate your CentOS 8 Linux to CentOS Stream on CentOS 8.

• How to Execute Ansible Ad-Hoc Commands

  In Ansible, Playbook files are usually used in executing tasks in remote hosts. These tasks range from installing and configuring services such as web and database servers to simple tasks such as checking uptime. However, when it comes to executing simple tasks in Ansible, ad hoc commands come very much in handy. Ad hoc commands enable you to quickly execute simple tasks on the fly without writing playbook files. In this guide, we show you how you can make the most of Ansible ad hoc commands.

• How to Check MySQL Version – TecAdmin

  MySQL is an relation database management system. At the writing time of this tutorial MySQL 8 is the latest version available. This tutorial help you to check MySQL server version running on your system.

• How To Reset Vagrant Virtual Machine To Original State – OSTechNix

  As you may already, Vagrant is an open source application to build and maintain virtual software development environments. You can quickly spin up a virtual machine using a pre-configured Vagrant box and copy the same Vagrant box to other systems to deploy a exact replica of the current development environment. Once you’re done exploring your development environment, you can simply reset the Vagrant machine back to it’s original default state. So you don’t have to download the same Vagrant box over and over.

• How To Install Postman On Linux? – Fossbytes

  API development or integration is not an easy task and takes a lot of effort, especially when developing/integrating larger APIs. Many steps are involved in the development process, like designing, virtualizing, documenting, etc. The most difficult task is to test out the APIs, but luckily, there is a lot of software that can save you time. One such software is Postman.

  Postman is a platform that makes the API development process much easier through its API Client, Automated Testing, and documentation. In this article, let’s look at how to install Postman on Linux.

• How To Install Mattermost on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS – idroot

  In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Mattermost on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Mattermost is an open-source and self-hosted messaging application used for chat, file sharing, search, and integrations written in Golang and React. It an alternative to Slack and provides a chat service with file sharing, search, and integrations. It is designed for organizations and companies and allows teams to communicate and collaborate securely from everywhere.

  This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you through the step by step installation of Mattermost on Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 18.04, 16.04, and any other Debian based distribution like Linux Mint.

• How To Encrypt File on Linux – devconnected

  If you are a conscientious system administrator, you have probably already wondered how you can make your files secure.

  Nowadays, as system attacks get more and more frequent, it isn’t probably a bad idea to think about encrypting your files.

  On Linux, there are multiple of encrypting files, directories or filesystems : namely using the LUKS disk encryption specification or simple tools such as GnuPG.

  In this tutorial, you will learn how you can easily encrypt files and directories on Linux using the GnuPG tool as well as the zip utility.

• How to Migrate CentOS 8 Installation to CentOS Stream

  This week, Red Hat created a huge public outcry over its announcement regarding the future of CentOS. Red Hat, in a shocking move, is discontinuing CentOS Project in favor of the rolling release, CentOS Stream.

  The focus now shifts to CentOS Stream as the main CentOS distribution. In fact, at the end of 2021, curtains close on CentOS 8 which is a rebuild of RHEL 8, to pave the way for CentOS Stream which will serve the upstream branch of RHEL. In short, there won’t be CentOS 9 based on RHEL 9 or any other CentOS point release going forward.

• How to Resize Images with Right Click on Linux

  Do you often manipulate images as part of your daily job?

  I personally need to do the graphics work for this website before uploading it to my blog.

  One of the most common image editing tasks is resizing, which tremendously reduces the image size from MB to KB.

  This allows images to load quickly on the web even if someone uses a slow internet.

• How to Install Linux Kernel 5.10 LTS in Ubuntu / Linux Mint | UbuntuHandbook

  Linux Kernel 5.10 was released a day ago as the latest LTS (Long Term Support) release. Here’s how to install in Ubuntu & Linux Mint.

  Linus Torvalds announced the release of Kernel 5.10: “Ok, here it is – 5.10 is tagged and pushed out. I pretty much always wish that the last week was even calmer than it was, and that’s true here too. There’s a fair amount of fixes in here, including a few last-minute reverts for things that didn’t get fixed, but nothing makes me go “we need another week”. Things look fairly normal.”

• How to Use Docker Compose – Tutorial with Examples – buildVirtual

  Docker Compose is a tool for defining and running multi-container applications. A typical example, and one which we will use later, would be a web server container and a database container configured to work together to provide a web application. Docker Compose then allows you to start the whole application with a single command!

  You start by creating a Dockerfile, to build docker images of your application – or you can use existing images from a registry. You then define your docker services that you need to run your app in a docker-compose.yml file (see example later). Finally, you can run the whole thing using the docker-compose up command!

• How to get your submicron wallpapers back and install the new mirrorlist for pacman.conf | Arcolinux.com

  You can still install the old wallpapers from Submicron. The repository still exists.

  It is just not in the /etc/pacman.conf anymore for one obvious reason. Everyone has their own set of wallpapers.

  You will need to change your /etc/pacman.conf if you want to install them via pacman.

• How to securely copy files between Linux hosts using SCP and SFTP | Enable Sysadmin

  There are multiple methods you can use to securely copy files between Linux hosts. SCP and SFTP are two you need to know.

Games

• Ubisoft+ begins rolling out on Stadia for players in the US | GamingOnLinux

  While the selection available to play on Stadia from Ubisoft isn’t currently very big, Ubisoft+ has now started rolling out on Stadia and it doesn’t need Stadia Pro either.

• NIGHT/SHADE is an upcoming 18+ LGBTQ romantic thriller visual novel | GamingOnLinux

  What looks like one to watch – NIGHT/SHADE is an upcoming romantic visual novel thriller from KingAsphy Studio.

  “NIGHT/SHADE is a visual novel about overcoming the toxicity within interpersonal relationships as well as within oneself. This character driven plot explores the complexities of love and loss in the form of a romantic thriller through the eyes of our main character, Sasha, while he navigates life’s darker elements and tries not to get caught in the crossfire of two ruthless crime syndicates.”

• Shield Cat is a thoroughly charming in-development action-adventure with a free demo | GamingOnLinux

  With a strange otter/cat as the protagonist, Shield Cat seems like one to keep on your watch list with some really charming visuals and you can try the free demo.

  “Shield Cat is an Action Adventure game with light RPG elements. You play as Lance, an otter/cat who must go on a quest to rescue his friends and the Cat Kingdom! Along the way you’ll solve puzzles, gain new abilities, meet new friends, and collect stuff!”

  It feels a bit like a classic Zelda title, one with plenty of exploration and secrets to find as you explore. Shield Cat is not a finished game though, with the developer mentioning it’s still a prototype but it’s fully playable and quite enjoyable to run around in. Such a ridiculously sweet atmosphere I absolutely love it. There’s already a plenty to explore, along with character ability customization. Shield Cat has all the makings of the next action-adventure hit.

• Direct3D 12 to Vulkan translation layer VKD3D-Proton version 2.1 is out | GamingOnLinux

  The what: paired up with the Wine and Steam Play Proton translation layers, VKD3D-Proton will translate Direct3D 12 to Vulkan and hopefully allow you to run some more advanced Windows-only games and apps on Linux. VKD3D-Proton is the Valve fork of the original project from the Wine developers, with a priority on performance and game compatibility.

• VKD3D-Proton 2.1 Released With Improved GPU-Bound Performance, More Games Working

  Valve’s VKD3D-Proton continues speeding along as their downstream of VKD3D for mapping Direct3D 12 over Vulkan. VKD3D-Proton 2.1 was just released and besides enhancing the GPU-bound performance there are more prominent DX12 games now working with this translation layer.

  VKD3D-Proton 2.1 can see around 15% better GPU-bound uplift in games like Ghostrunner and other Unreal Engine 4 titles. There are also slight improvements in fully GPU bound scenarios for both AMD and NVIDIA graphics, other optimizations that will benefit RADV, and also lower multi-threaded CPU overhead with some situations. This release also makes use of the recent VK_VALVE_mutable_descriptor_type Vulkan extension that should also further lower the overhead.

• Practice coding in Java by writing a game | Opensource.com

  My article about learning different programming languages lists five things you need to understand when starting a new language. An important part of learning a language, of course, is knowing what you intend to do with it.

  I’ve found that simple games are both fun to write and useful in exploring a language’s abilities. In this article, I demonstrate how to create a simple guessing game in Java.

Desktop Environments/WMs

• K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

  • Kate is 20 years old!

    As announced before, Kate turned twenty today.

    Here again my initial request to the KWrite maintainer about my work on a ‘MDI KWrite’ later called Kate (sorry, German & spelling mistakes)…

    Funny enough, if you look at the timestamp of the mail, it got mailed out at “18:38:42”. I was 18 then, now I am 38 and 42 is always a good number, I couldn’t have faked that timestamp better!

  • KDE Plasma Mobile ends Halium support, shifts focus to phones running mainline Linux kernel, en

    Folks have been finding way to run GNU/Linux distributions on smartphones for years. But it’s only in the past few years that phone makers have started to produce phones designed to run operating systems that use a mainline Linux kernel.

    So projects like Halium arose to simplify the process of getting a Linux-based operating system like Ubuntu Touch or KDE Neon to run on an off-the-shelf Android phone like a Google Nexus 5X by providing a bridge that allowed the operating system to communicate with a phone’s hardware using the Linux kernel provided by phone makers and Android services.

  • Plasma Mobile: Technical debt and moving forward

    In August 2015, we announced the Plasma Mobile project at Akademy 2015 in A Coruña, Spain. In ~5 years, the project has evolved quite a lot, from an initial prototype, to being a fully functional mobile software system.

    The initial prototype was created by replacing components from the Ubuntu Touch userspace which ran on the Google Nexus 5 device. This prototype system used the minimal Android userspace confined in an LXC container to access various drivers, like graphics, modem, wifi, sensors among others.

    In the following years, we revisited the initial prototype architecture multiple times. You can read about some of the details in the following blogposts by Bhushan Shah.

  • KDE Plasma Mobile Drops Halium Support In Favor Of Open Devices

  • Calamares website update | [bobulate]

    The Calamares team is happy to announce a re-vamp of the Calamares website. Thanks to Anke Boersma (better known as the driving force behind KaOS) the design, layout and technology behind the website have jumped forward.

Distributions

• New Releases

  • NuTyX 20.12.0 available with cards 2.4.123

    21 months after the release of the first version of NuTyX 11, I am very happy to announce the new version of NuTyX 20.12.0 and cards 2.4.123. The 64-bit version is a complete new project.

    The compilation chain is completely rebuilt in addition to glibc 2.32, gcc 10.2.0 and binutils 2.34

    The xorg-server graphics server version 1.20.10, the Mesa 3D library in 20.3.0, gtk3 3.24.24 and qt 5.15.2 are also in their latest versions.

    The python interpreters are ent 3.9.0 and 2.7.18.

    The XFCE desktop environment is updated to version 4.14.3.

    The MATE desktop environment is also updated to version 1.24, the latest version available.

    The KDE desktop environment is available in Plasma 5.20.4, Framework 5.76.0 and applications in 20.12.0. et les applications en 20.12.0.

    Available browsers are: firefox 83.0, chromium 87.0.4280.88, falkon 3.1.0, epiphany 3.38.2, etc

    Many desktop applications have been updated as well like thunderbird 78.5.1, Scribus 1.5.6, libreoffice 7.0.3.2, gimp 2.10.22, etc.

    Core NuTyX ships with Long Term Support (LTS) kernels: 4.9.248, 4.14.212, 4.19.163, 5.4.83, and 5.10.0 and the latest stable version 5.9.14.

• PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva/OpenMandriva Family

  • Mandriva Linux-Based Mageia 8 Beta 2 Is Out With Major Package Update

    It has been more than a year since the last stable release of Mageia Linux distribution as the upcoming Mageia version 8 is still under development and inching closer to its stable build slow and steady.

    However, as the year 2020 is about to end, Mageia team has finally announced the second beta build of the next Mageia 8. The latest Beta 2 includes updates to packages, Kernel, Java, and the graphical stack, and the base system upgrade.

• SUSE/OpenSUSE

  • openSUSE Leap offers Predictability

    Users of the community enterprise distributions can be confident in the direction of openSUSE Leap for those who might be hunting for a stable Linux distribution that offers predictability and longevity.

    Minor releases like openSUSE Leap 15.2 sometimes get compared to a major release. The minor releases are essentially updates that people can choose rather than have forced updates.

    Major versions of Leap receive long periods of maintenance and security updates; the release cycle has additional overlap that is greater than that of alternatives. Major releases are coming roughly every three to four years and minor releases come usually once a year, which leads to a life cycle of about 18 months of maintenance and security updates per minor release. Many of the package’s versions are the same as in previous minor releases.

    Leap aligns with SUSE Linux Enterprise and its Service Packs (SP), which keeps the system updated, stable and patched. openSUSE and SUSE have been collaborating to bring openSUSE Leap 15.3 and SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 SP3 even closer together to make them fully compatible.

  • Board Elections – Meet the Candidates – openSUSE News

    As the openSUSE Board election is drawing closer, with the ballots opening on December 15 already, we want to invite the openSUSE community to a “meet-and-greet” and QA live session with the candidates.

    In the past weeks there have been passionate discussions on the election and candidates, and we felt we had to answer the community’s interest with a proper setting.

    In this video call the candidates will introduces themselves, present their openSUSE board election platforms and answer questions. While this might sound a bit formal we really want to keep it very informal and relaxed for everyone. The goal is to give the community a better picture of the candidates so they can decide whom to vote for.

• IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

  • Gardiner Bryant: Red Hat BETRAYS its community, KILLS CentOS

  • Top 5 Free Linux Distributions for CentOS Replacement (Desktop and Server)

    The Red Hat, Inc decided to prematurely end the life of CentOS 8 “stable” by December 2021 which was earlier planned for EOL as of 2029. CentOS 8 is now replaced by the rolling release based CentOS Stream. Sever administrators across the world are in a decision-making stage based on their respective infrastructures and dependency. To help everyone, here are the top 5 free Linux distribution for CentOS replacement for you – applicable for both servers and desktop.

  • Here are the Worthy Replacements of CentOS 8 for Your Production Linux Servers

    CentOS is one of the most popular server distributions in the world. It is an open source fork of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and provides the goodness of RHEL without the cost associated with RHEL.

    However, things have changed recently. Red Hat is converting a stable CentOS to a rolling release model in the form of CentOS Stream. CentOS 8 was supposed to be supported till 2029 but it is now forced discontinued by the end of 2021.

    If you are using CentOS for your servers, it may make you wonder where to go from here.

  • Ubuntu vs. CentOS for Small Businesses – RoseHosting

    Choosing an operating system for your server or business is not an easy task, especially if you are looking to use a Linux distribution. This is because there are hundreds of versions available for Linux, each with their own benefits. Out of the hundreds of options, the most popular choices for web servers are Ubuntu and CentOS. Knowing the differences between Ubuntu vs. CentOS for small businesses can help you decide which will work best for your business’ use case.

  • Need a stable, RHEL-compatible alternative to CentOS? Three reasons to consider Oracle Linux

    If you are reading this blog, you are probably a CentOS user and are in the position where you need to look at alternatives going forward.

    Switching to Oracle Linux is easy, so here are a few reasons to consider why you should.

    Free to download, use, and distribute — for more than 14 years
    Since the debut of Oracle Linux release 4, in 2006, it has been completely free to use and easy to download. Major and update release have been free for more than 14 years. Errata releases have been freely available since 2012. Free source code, free binaries, free updates, free errata, freely redistributable and free to use in production — all without having to sign any documents with Oracle and without any need to remove trademarks and copyrights.

    Oracle Linux has an equivalent release for every major Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) version: 4, 5, 6, 7, and most recently 8. Oracle Linux releases consistently track Red Hat with errata typically released within 24 hours, update releases usually available within five business days, and major version releases within three months.

  • CentOS-8 End of Life 2021-12-31

    Red Hat announced changes to CentOS Linux release structure last week, and I like everyone else around is working through what that means. I have worked with and on CentOS since 2005, and saw a lot of my work in EPEL as helping people in that community able to get things done. This has been a real kick to the guts for a lot of people, and I do not have the words to express myself on this. That said, as a System Administrator, you have to take the Tango Charlie Foxtrot’s as they are handed to you, plan what to do next, and execute as efficiently as possible.

  • CentOS 8/6 Linux would end, what are the best possible alternatives in 2021?

    Red Hat recently announced that CentOS 8 Linux a head to head version to Red Hat 8 Enterprise version will no longer be supported and discontinued at the end of 2021. And on its place, the rolling version CentOS Stream as the downstream branch of RHEL, launched in 2019, will continue to find out bugs to make the upstream version more stable and secure.

    However, CentOS 7 running servers, will not get affected and have the updates in parallel to the RHEL 7 life cycle. RHEL 7 will end its last maintenance cycles in 2024.

    However, if you are using CentOS 8, then what are the alternatives in 2021? Unfortunately, even though if you find the one then migration of server applications will be another challenge. Yet, here are some options to replace CentOS in 2021.

  • Fedora 34 Gets Sign-Off For Trying To Default To PipeWire For Audio Needs

    The Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee (FESCo) has signed off on the proposal for defaulting to PipeWire with Fedora 34 due out next spring.

    The proposal is for Fedora 34 to default to PipeWire in place of PulseAudio and JACK. After Red Hat has been investing in PipeWire the past several years as the audio/video stream management solution and designed to securely fit the needs of Wayland, Flatpak, and other modern Linux technologies, they feel it’s ready for the limelight.

  • Building a better subscription management experience part 1: Simple Content Access

    Subscription management, in general, can be anywhere on the spectrum from unnoticeably simple to unbearably painful depending on what company you’re working with, how involved you are with their subscription components, and oftentimes, how educated you are in their policies.

    Here at Red Hat, we understand it hasn’t been all rainbows and butterflies when it comes to managing a Red Hat Subscription. But we are working on making this process as smooth and painless as possible for all of our users, regardless of their role, involvement, or training levels.

    I’m here to tell you, we’re working with a goal to achieve “absolute zero” when it comes to how much we require from our customers in order to manage their Red Hat Subscriptions.

  • Red Hat Shares ― Special edition: This year in open source (2020)

    We’ve seen the terrifying (COVID-19, “murder” hornets), the hopeful (promising COVID-19 vaccine trial results, a global reawakening to issues related to racial inequity), the thought-provoking (“unidentified aerial phenomena” videos released by the U.S. government), and the downright weird (a puppy born with green fur, a drumming duck named Ben Afquack).

    While we didn’t film UFOs or train waterfowl to play percussion instruments, Red Hat Shares did cover some timely and important technology topics this year―from edge computing to Kubernetes to automation―as well as our first virtual Red Hat Summit.

    In our end-of-year issue, check out the top 10 Red Hat Shares stories from 2020, Red Hat’s 2021 Global Tech Outlook, advice on how to prepare your IT infrastructure for the next 10 years, how we’re helping fight COVID-19, and more.

• Canonical/Ubuntu Family

  • Linux Mint 20.1 Beta Is Now Available for Download

    Linux Mint 20.1 Beta just popped up on the main download servers of the popular Ubuntu-based distribution, so I was able to grab the ISO images to take a look at the changes and publish a few words and some screenshots before the Linux Mint team will officially announce the release on their blog with more details on what’s new.

    As you know, the Linux Mint team released the Cinnamon 4.8 desktop environment about two weeks ago, so the biggest new features is that the flagship Cinnamon edition of Linux Mint 20.1 beta comes with Cinnamon 4.8.3 by default.

  • Ubuntu Fridge | Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 661

    Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 661 for the week of December 6 – 12, 2020.

Devices/Embedded

• ZimaBoard, a new Hackable Open Source Single Board Server

  Single board computer? It’s time for Single board servers. A new product, ZimaBoard, is being prepared for its crowdfunding campaign to give you a “hackable single board server”.

  ZimaBoard: Like Raspberry Pi but focused on home servers

  Single-board computers (SBCs) have been around for a while performing a range of educational, commercial, and industrial applications. Their popularity increased in recent years among hobbyists and DIY enthusiasts looking for low-cost devices that get the job done with efficiency.

  While Raspberry Pi has started eyeing on the entry-level desktop market with the recent Raspberry Pi 400 like devices, it is interesting to see someone focusing on server devices with ZimaBoard. The makers even term is as “single board server” instead of the usual “single board computer”.

• Hackboard 2 Is a $140 Windows 10 Pro Single-Board Computer

  Orders placed now will be shipped on April 30, 2021. The Ubuntu Linux version of the board is exclusive to CrowdSupply and won’t be offered once the funding campaign (which has already reached its goal) ends. There’s nothing to stop you purchasing the Windows 10 Pro version and switching to a Linux distro, though.

• The HackBoard 2 Offers Windows 10 Pro and an Intel Celeron N4020

  Anyone looking to get a HackBoard 2 should back the crowd supply campaign for $140, with Windows 10 Pro, or $99 for the Ubuntu Linux version.

• Sxmo 1.2.0 adds support for gesture controls

  And then there’s Sxmo. Described as a “collection of simple and suckless X programs and scripts,” this made-for-Pinephone software lets you navigate using the phone’s power and volume keys. For example, you can open an application-specific context menu by tapping the volume up key, then use the up and down arrows to navigate and the power button to select your choice.

  It’s… honestly kind of tedious.

  Fortunately Sxmo also supports touch input. So you can, for example, tap the power button once to bring up an on-screen keyboard and then type out a search or command.

  And now, starting with Sxmo version 1.2.0, you can also use gesture-based navigation for a bunch of actions.

• A Phone That Respects Your Children – Purism

  Even if a child doesn’t have a phone of their own, they often borrow their parent’s phone to play games or watch videos. Most phones don’t distinguish between children or adults when it comes to the data they collect.

  The Librem 5 respects the privacy of you and your children by running free software that does not track you. The Librem 5’s hardware kill switches allow you to disable the network completely with a flip of the switch so your child doesn’t accidentally end up online, making it the best phone for a child’s privacy.

• Ultra-compact Apollo Lake net appliance has mini-PCIe and M.2 too

  Axiomtek’s “NA347” network appliance runs Linux or Win 10 on a dual-core Celeron N3350 with up to 8GB RAM, 3x GbE, 2x USB 3.0, HDMI, M.2 for SATA, and mini-PCIe and nano-SIM for wireless.

  Axiomtek has released an even smaller, 146 x 118.2 x 26mm variation on its quad-port, 146 x 118.2 x 33.5mm NA346 network appliance. The NA347 similarly runs Yocto-based Linux or Win 10 on a dual-core, up to 2.4GHz Celeron N3350 Apollo Lake SoC with a a 6W TDP. The 3-port system is designed as an entry-level SD-WAN, VPN, and security gateway for small and home offices and other IIoT security applications

• Banana Pi BPI-M5 SBC with 4GB RAM, 16GB flash launched for $53

  Last September, we wrote Banana Pi team was working on an Amlogic S905X3 SBC called BPI-M5 and very similar to Hardkernel ODROID-C4 board launched in April 2020. At the time, we noted the Banana Pi BPI-M5 did add a 16GB eMMC flash on-board by default, while ODROID-C4 requires booting from a MicroSD card or a separate eMMC flash module.

• Open Hardware/Modding

  • Arduino Blog » Know what time it is anywhere in the world with this Nano 33 IoT-based NTP clock

    Kaleb Clark, like many of us, works with others from all around the globe. While he could view any number of websites or commercial options to see what time it is for these other people, he decided to make a world clock to get this info at a glance.

    What he came up with uses a 3.5″ SPI TFT screen to show eight time zones in the device’s main section, plus a pair of 7-segment displays for two more “slots.” The unit runs on an Arduino Nano 33 IoT, which checks the time over WiFi via the Network Time Protocol, or NTP.

• Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • Android 11 begins rolling out for Sony Xperia 1 II

  • Android 11 update starts rolling out to Galaxy Note 20 series

  • We asked, you told us: This is your least favorite part of Wear OS

  • This is Phone Hub for Chrome OS — Google’s promising attempt at deeper Android integration

  • Do the AirPods Max work with Android phones?

  • Hands-on: ‘AAWireless’ aims to give any car wireless Android Auto and, impressively, it works

  • Ensure your WiFi network is ready for the Android 11 QPR1 security update

  • Android 11 has started rolling out to the Samsung Galaxy Note 20 range

  • LG Has Kicked Off Android 11 Public Beta Testing

  • Android 11′s media controls can be completely dismissed after the December patch

  • Sony’s first Android 11 update is officially underway

  • Poll of The Week: Have you received the Android 11 update?

  • Official: Nokia C1 Plus launched globally with Android 10 Go

  • Top 8 basketball games for Android phone and tablets

  • The 5 Best Pixel Art Apps for Android and iOS

  • iPhone To Android Switch: 5 Ways To Transfer Your Contact From iPhone To An Android Device

  • How to Easily Transfer Files to Android TV Using Cloud Service

  • The Google outage killed Android phones, showing how fragile tech ecosystems are

  • Lenovo Tab P11 Pro Android tablet now available for $500 and up

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• Web Browsers

  • Mozilla

    • Firefox 84 Is Now Available for Download with WebRender Enabled by Default on Linux

      Firefox 84 had a small release cycle with only eight beta versions and comes a month after Firefox 83, which added a HTTPS-Only mode to make your web browsing more secure. The biggest change in Firefox 84 for Linux users appears to be the enablement of WebRender by default on Linux/GNOME/X11.

      Yes, you’re reading that right, Mozilla said that the WebRender feature will be enabled on GNU/Linux systems using the GNOME desktop environment and running on top of X.Org Server (X11), not Wayland.

• CMS

  • 20 Free and Open Source Static Site Generators

    Websites are divided into static and dynamic websites. Dynamic websites are usually powered by a CMS (Content Management System) like WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal. CMS builds the page from the database and HTML templates every time a user requests it. On the other hand, Static Sites are websites that are served from a web server to the client without any changes. Static Sites are on the rise nowadays because they offer more speed, security, and simplicity in development than dynamic websites.

    Static Site Generators are a set of tools which simplify the process of generating static webpages from HTML, CSS, and Markdown. The following is a list of the top free and open source Static Site Generators.

• FSF

  • GNU Projects

    • parted-3.3.52 released [alpha]

      I’ve built a 3.3.52 alpha, this will become the stable 3.4 release in a
      few weeks if nothing critical is found. I’ll be on vacation for a bit, I
      may not do this until mid-January.
      Here are the compressed sources and a GPG detached signature[*]:

      http://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/parted/parted-3.3.52.tar.xz

      http://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/parted/parted-3.3.52.tar.xz.sig

      Use a mirror for higher download bandwidth:

      https://www.gnu.org/order/ftp.html

      [*] Use a .sig file to verify that the corresponding file (without the
      .sig suffix) is intact. First, be sure to download both the .sig file
      and the corresponding tarball. Then, run a command like this:
      gpg –verify parted-3.3.52.tar.xz.sig
      If that command fails because you don’t have the required public key,
      then run this command to import it:
      gpg –keyserver keys.gnupg.net –recv-keys 117E8C168EFE3A7F
      and rerun the ‘gpg –verify’ command.
      This release was bootstrapped with the following tools:
      Autoconf 2.69
      Automake 1.16.1
      Gettext 0.21
      Gnulib v0.1-4130-g8183682cc
      Gperf 3.1
      NEWS
      Noteworthy changes in release 3.3.52 (2020-12-14) [alpha]
      New Features
      Add a new partition type flag, chromeos_kernel, for use with ChromeOS
      machines. This is a GPT-only flag and sets the type GUID to
      FE3A2A5D-4F32-41A7-B725-ACCC3285A309.
      Add a new partition flag for Linux Boot Loader Specification /boot
      partitions. The bls_boot flag will set the msdos partition type to 0xea
      and the GPT partition type GUID to bc13c2ff-59e6-4262-a352-b275fd6f7172.

  • Licensing/Legal

    • Open Source Software Copyright Licenses Did Not Cause Trademark To Be Abandoned Under “Naked Licensing” Theory [Ed: Calling what you dislike (less money in it) "naked"]

      A California district court dismissed a trademark infringement defense based on allegations that the trademark owner had abandoned its trademark rights through “naked licensing,” but here the court found the open-source license granted by the owner of trademarks was in fact a copyright license, not a trademark license.

• Programming/Development

  • The 20 Best Node.Js Books For Beginner and Expert Developers

    Node.js is an incredible platform for creating seamless high performing, and scalable websites. It is an excellent platform for connecting a huge range of devices in recent days through centralized API. Node.js has a wide range of applications in recent days for web application building and development. Thereby, to have a proper guideline for learning Node.js, a perfect set of Node.js books is indecipherably important. People who know basic node application wants to explore deeper and work with this interesting tool further.

  • Perl/Raku

    • Closures as objects

      Perl’s object system is not one of its most admired qualities. Included in the 1993 Perl 5.0 release, objects were a bolt-on. A big improvement at the time, in today’s context the Perl 5 object system requires too much boilerplate and is under-powered compared to other language offerings (no private state, no type checking, no traits, no multimethods). Perl programmers have been trying to upgrade it for years (Cor is a recent example).

      Combining a few concepts can lead to great power; 60 years ago in the LISP Programmer’s Manual John McCarthy showed how a Lisp interpreter could be created from simple parsing rules, a few types and just five (!) elementary functions.

      Two things Perl 5 got right was its lexical scoping rules and support for anonymous functions (“lambdas”). Combine those features and you can make closures. And just what are closures good for? Well it turns out they’re pretty damn powerful; powerful enough, in fact to make a better object system than Perl’s built-in offering.

    • Raku Challenge Week 91 – Andrew Shitov

      Hi, here’s my Raku breakfast with the solutions of Week 91 of The Weekly Challenge.

    • 2020.50 New on Wikipedia – Rakudo Weekly News

      Ogniloud has added a number of Raku sections on Wikipedia, specifically to the Iterator and Iterator pattern lemmas. What a great idea! Yours truly is hoping to see more of these high quality additions to Wikipedia highlighting Raku features (/r/rakulang comments)!

  • Python

    • My journey at Mozilla

      During the spring of 2010, I applied for a job at Mozilla Labs. They were looking for a Python developer to re-write the Firefox Sync service (called Weave back then) into Python. They wanted to move all of their web services from PHP to Python, and looked for a Python expert to help them.

      The interviews went very well, and they were planning to fly me over for an onsite day, and then everything went to a full stop because the Eyjafjallajökull volcano blocked all transatlantic flights. I was really worried I would miss that opportunity. But I was eventually able to fly there, on Castro street, at the Mozilla Office that used to be the Netscape office back in the old days.

  • Rust

    • The Rust Programming Language Blog: Next steps for the Foundation Conversation

      Last week we kicked off the Foundation Conversation, a week-long period of Q&A forums and live broadcasts with the goal of explaining our vision for the Foundation and finding out what sorts of questions people had. We used those questions to help build a draft Foundation FAQ, and if you’ve not seen it yet, you should definitely take a look — it’s chock full of good information. Thanks to everyone for asking such great questions!

      We’ve created a new survey that asks about how people experienced the Foundation Conversation. Please take a moment to fill it out! We’re planning a similar event for this January, so your feedback will be really helpful.

      This post is going to discuss how the Foundation and the Rust project relate to one another.

    • Changes to Rust compiler team | Inside Rust Blog

      Here is something very new for our team: We are rotating the leadership. Niko Matsakis will be stepping down from their role as co-lead, and Wesley Wiser will be joining Felix Klock as the co-leads for the team.

      Niko remains a compiler team member and will continue his contributions, especially on the RFC 2229, Polonius and Chalk projects. Niko’s blog post discusses their motivations for stepping down in more detail.

    • Advent of Rust 13: Lucky Numbers

      It’s time for the 13th installment of the chronicle of me doing programming puzzles from Advent of Code 2020 to teach myself the Rust programming language.

      Looking at the lessons that I learned from previous days, today I resolve to be more systematic about debugging. If I get the wrong answer I will try my program on the example input first, before changing up a bunch of other things.

    • Starting a new job – The Lego Mirror

      Last week I officially joined the Site Reliability Engineering team at the Wikimedia Foundation. I’ll be working with the Service Operations team, which “…takes care of public and “user-visible” services.”

      [...]

      P.S.: I created a new userbox about Rust on mediawiki.org.

  • Java

    • Write in XML with the NetBeans text editor | Opensource.com

      I’ve spent a considerable amount of time in NetBeans, a Java IDE (integrated development environment) maintained by the Apache Foundation. I find it’s got a good mix of automated abstraction and manual configuration that helps me keep my Java projects organized and optimized. Not all IDEs give much thought to text files, but XML is frequently used in Java projects, so XML support in NetBeans is an important feature. It occurred to me that NetBeans, in addition to being an excellent Java IDE, could make for a nice XML editor, with the added benefit of being contained in a familiar application I already use.

git rebasing and lab books

For my PhD work, I’ve been working on preparing an experimental branch of StrIoT for merging down to the main branch. This has been a long-lived branch (a year!) within which I’ve been exploring some ideas. Some of the code I want to keep, and some I don’t.

The history of the experimental branch is consequently messy. Looking it over and considering what a reviewer needs to see, there’s a lot of things that are irrelevant and potentially distracting. And so, I’ve been going through an iterative process of steadily whittling down the history to the stuff that matters: some strings of commits are dropped, others squashed together, and others re-ordered. The resulting branch is a historic fiction.

Science

• Neanderthal-specific Variants in Sodium Ion Channel Gene Associated with Sensitivity to Pain in Modern Humans

  Over the past decade, genetic archeology has revealed two branches of the human family tree, one known since the 19th Century (the Neanderthals) and the other more recently discovered (the Denisovans, an Asian relative of the Neanderthal population). These populations evolved without genetic intermingling with Homo sapiens sapiens for about 500,000 years, which resulted in the accumulation of genetic variants specific for these populations. But the migration of modern human populations out of Africa and throughout the world resulted in interbreeding between humans and Neanderthals or Denisovans about 60,00-40,000 years ago, and as a result there are genetic sequences inherited from them in modern human DNA that can be distinguished on the basis of these population-specific genetic alterations (see, e.g., Inherited Neanderthal Gene Encodes Genetic Risk for COVID-19).

  Recent work* has found a cluster of genetic alterations ultimately inherited by modern humans from Neanderthals in a paper entitled “A Neanderthal Sodium Channel Increases Pain Sensitivity in Present-Day Humans,” published in Cell Current Biology 30: P3465-69. These alterations were found in a Neanderthal version of a gene, the SCN9A gene, that encodes Nav1.7 voltage-gated sodium ion channel involved in nerve transmission in peripheral nerves and implicated in pain sensation. In modern humans, mutations in this gene causing a “loss of function” phenotype (inactivation of this gene) are associated with pain insensitivity and anosmia, while “gain of function” mutations (increased activity) are associated with idiopathic small-fiber neuropathy and increased sensitivity to pain.

Health/Nutrition

• The New Humanitarian | Focus on girls to confront COVID-19 costs in Bangladesh

  No one comes out of a crisis without being changed in some way, and this pandemic is a crisis on a scale we have rarely seen: It has put years of progress in human development at stake; inequity is at its worst.

  If we have to prioritise one thing, it should be ensuring that girls don’t go back to despair, teenage motherhood, and premature death. Girls must have the chance to flourish and pursue a bright future in spite of COVID-19.

  Girls are profoundly impacted by the pandemic in multiple ways: by the economic effects on their families and the resulting food insecurity, by the increase in domestic violence and child marriage, or by the closing of schools, among other factors.
  In Bangladesh, for instance, research by the Power and Participation Research Centre and the BRAC Institute of Governance and Development shows that COVID-19 is creating millions of “new poor” – people whose income was 40 percent above the poverty line but have fallen below it as economies are disrupted. A recent study by the Centre for Research and Information, a Dhaka-based non-profit, estimates that the “new poor” now totals 38 million – roughly one in five Bangladeshis.

Integrity/Availability

• Proprietary

  • A Mini Browser War in Linux [Ed: ECT pushing proprietary software/malware for GNU/Linux instead of Freedom-respecting browsers]

    Two new Web browsing alternatives widen the field of browser choices for Linux users. The recent introduction of Microsoft Edge for Linux, and the Dec. 8 release of Vivaldi version 3.5 offer the freedom to experience a Google-free vehicle to navigate the Internet.

    I reviewed much earlier versions of Vivaldi several years ago. At that time I was searching for a powerhouse replacement for the plain-Jane Chromium browser. I found much to really like with Vivaldi. The current Vivaldi is even more impressive.

    Back in the days when I still had a thing for the Microsoft Windows platform, I shunned the default Internet Explorer browser for Firefox. Microsoft recently replaced its outdated Web browser with its own version of the open-source Chromium Web browser that Google built out to create its proprietary Chrome browser.

    This new Microsoft replacement is now available for the Linux platform. Still undergoing fine tuning in the Dev Channel, it works remarkably well on Linux OSes, despite a lot of its moving parts still being a work in progress, or outright missing.

    Nevertheless, Edge on Linux has the potential for widespread adoption once it matures. It should be especially attractive to former Windows 10 users making the transition to Linux.

  • Pseudo-Open Source

    • Privatisation/Privateering

      • Linux Foundation

        • HVMI: Security Solutions Thrive on Friendly Hypervisors – Xen Project

          This talk was given by Raul Tosa & Daniel Ticle, Bitdefender at the Xen Developer and Design Summit in July 2020. In July, Bitdefender open sourced Hypervisor Memory Introspection (HVMI). This talk provided a preview.
          Security solutions like Hypervisor Memory Introspection (HVMI) require dedicated hypervisor support. One example is the possibility to apply specific memory permissions to certain memory pages, and to be notified when the guest OS tries to violate those permissions.
          During the development of HVMI technology, Bitdefender required a hypervisor that was developed in-house, codenamed Napoca, which could be quickly and easily adapted for HVMI requirements. As a “how-to” hypervisor support model, Raul and Daniel previewed the release of the source code to the open-source community with the hope that it would serve as inspiration for future HVMI-related functionality in Xen Hypervisor.

        • Prepr Partners with the Linux Foundation to Provide Digital Work-Integrated Learning through the F.U.N.™ Program

          Prepr is excited to announce a new partnership with The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, that will give work-integrated learning experiences to youth facing employment barriers.

    • Entrapment (Microsoft GitHub)

      • Hacks.Mozilla.Org: Welcome Yari: MDN Web Docs has a new platform [Ed: Mozilla is outsourcing to Microsoft's proprietary software again.]

        The most significant difference with the new platform is that we’ve decentralized the content from a SQL database to files in a git repository. To edit content, you now submit pull requests against the https://github.com/mdn/content repo, rather than editing the wiki using the old WYSIWYG editor.

  • Security

    • Security updates for Monday

      Security updates have been issued by Debian (lxml, openexr, openssl, and openssl1.0), Fedora (libpri, libxls, mediawiki, nodejs, opensc, php-wikimedia-assert, php-zordius-lightncandy, squeezelite, and wireshark), openSUSE (curl, openssh, openssl-1_0_0, python-urllib3, and rpmlint), Red Hat (libexif, libpq, and thunderbird), Slackware (p11), SUSE (kernel, Kubernetes, etcd, helm, openssl, openssl-1_0_0, and python), and Ubuntu (linux, linux-aws, linux-aws-5.4, linux-azure, linux-azure-5.4, linux-gcp, linux-gcp-5.4, linux-hwe-5.4, linux-kvm, linux-oracle, linux-oracle-5.4, linux-raspi, linux-raspi-5.4, linux, linux-aws, linux-aws-hwe, linux-azure, linux-azure-4.15, linux-gcp, linux-gcp-4.15, linux-gke-4.15, linux-hwe, linux-kvm, linux-oracle, linux-snapdragon, and linux, linux-aws, linux-azure, linux-gcp, linux-kvm, linux-oracle, linux-raspi).

    • New Windows Trojan Steals Browser Credentials, Outlook Files | Threatpost

      The newly discovered Python-based malware family targets the Outlook processes, and browser credentials, of Microsoft Windows victims.

      Researchers have discovered a new information-stealing trojan, which targets Microsoft Windows systems with an onslaught of data-exfiltration capabilities– from collecting browser credentials to targeting Outlook files.

      The trojan, called PyMicropsia (due to it being built with Python) has been developed by threat group AridViper, researchers said, which is known for targeting organizations in the Middle East.

      “AridViper is an active threat group that continues developing new tools as part of their arsenal,” researchers with Palo Alto’s Unit42 research team said in a Monday analysis. “Also, based on different aspects of PyMicropsia that we analyzed, several sections of the malware are still not used, indicating that it is likely a malware family under active development by this actor.”

    • Committee or Community: Slowing down the future – Open Source Security

      I wrote a blog post about looking back, and I have a bit of snark in there where I talk about slowing down the future. I wanted to explain this a bit more and give everyone some food for thought around how we used to do things and how we should do them moving forward. There are groups and people that exist to slow things down. Sometimes that’s on purpose for good reasons, sometimes it’s on purpose for bad reasons, sometimes it’s not on purpose at all.

      I want to start with the idea that a lot of standards are there to slow us down on purpose. This isn’t meant to be a hot take, this is the actual truth and it’s a good thing. Standards exist to help everyone work together. If standards change too quickly it creates barriers instead of opportunities. Imagine if HTTP or TCP/IP changed drastically every year. It would be horrible, the internet wouldn’t look anything like it does today.

      Now, there are times when slow change is the opposite of what we want to do. Emerging technologies are a great example of this. Imagine if the Linux Kernel API changes had to pass a standards committee. There would be no progress, development would grind to a halt and nobody would want to contribute to such a project. The project wouldn’t be the success it is today.

      There are some standards groups where being slow actually helps progress, and there are some groups that hurt progress by moving slowly. For the purpose of this blog post, let’s focus on new technologies. New technology needs to move fast and iterate without a committee telling them what to do. New technologies should work more like an open source project to move forward. In the world of open source it’s easier to build an example then talk about what the example does. The work is fast and the work itself is the discussion. This model has mostly taken over the world. It is fast, open, and makes it easy to help.

    • Hackers are abusing a disputed vulnerability to launch attacks on Linux machines [Ed: This is ZDNet FUD being recycled]

      “We believe PGMiner is the first cryptocurrency mining botnet that is delivered via PostgreSQL,” note the Palo Alto Networks Unit42 researchers.

      The researchers explain that PGMiner hunts for PostgreSQL installations whose administrators have forgotten to disable the default ‘postgres’ administrator user account. It then brute-forces its way to the account’s password, before exploiting PostgreSQL’s controversial copy from program feature to start mining.

    • Why getting voting right is hard, Part II: Hand-Counted Paper Ballots – The Mozilla Blog

      In Part I we looked at desirable properties for voting system. In this post, I want to look at the details of a specific system: hand-counted paper ballots.

    • Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt/Fear-mongering/Dramatisation

      • SUSE statement on Amnesia:33 vulnerabilities | SUSE Communities

        Researchers from Forescout research labs have published a set of new software vulnerabilities that affect embedded TCP/IP stacks.

        The set of vulnerabilities, called AMNESIA:33, only affects small parts of the SUSE Linux Enterprise set of packages.

      • Anatomy of a Linux Ransomware Attack.

        Linux ransomware is on the rise, but ransomware risk is still significantly lower for Linux users than for their Windows- and MacOS-using counterparts. Although Linux is becoming an increasingly attractive target among ransomware developers and operators, the vast majority of ransomware still targets Windows systems, and as a result of the privilege system that Linux adheres to, the impact of a ransomware attack exploiting a vulnerable Linux web server is generally much smaller than a ransomware attack affecting a Windows system.

        In addition, because Linux is an open-source OS, Linux source code undergoes constant scrutiny from the “many eyes” of the global open-source community. As a result, vulnerabilities in Linux that could potentially be exploited in ransomware attacks are generally identified and fixed much faster than security bugs that exist in proprietary OSes.

Defence/Aggression

• The New Humanitarian | Liberian women still wait for promised action on rape

  More than three months ago, Liberian President George Weah declared rape a national emergency at a keynote conference, vowing to improve support for rape survivors and strengthen the country’s prosecution system.

  But few concrete steps have been taken since and Weah’s ambitious-sounding promises were quickly drowned out by the din of campaigning in the run-up to last week’s Senate elections: Sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) hardly featured as an issue.

  The appointment of a Special Prosecutor for rape, the creation of a National Sex Offenders Registry, and the establishment of a National Security Task Force on SGBV are all now stalled initiatives. “There has not been any progress made on the government’s part,” said a disappointed Benita Urey, a 22-year-old student, blogger, and charity worker.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• Replace the Electoral College with a Ranked-Choice National Popular Vote for President

  Democratic principles demand that the president should be elected by the people on the basis of one-person, one-vote. But today the Electoral College will elect the president based on an anachronistic anti-democratic 18th century system where some people’s votes count a lot more than others.

  For example, Wyoming has a population of 579,759 and three electoral votes. California has a population of 39,512,223 and 55 electoral votes. Do the math and you find that a vote in Wyoming counts 3.6 times more than a vote in California in the Electoral College.

  The Electoral College originated in the racist three-fifths compromise in the US Constitution that added enslaved people who couldn’t vote to the population of the slave states, which gave the slave states disproportionate representation and power in the federal government. This distortion continued for another century after slavery during the years of Jim Crow disenfranchisement of black voters. The racial bias of the Electoral College continues to this day by giving extra power to the smaller states that tend to have disproportionately white electorates.

  It is time to end this insult to the democratic principle of political equality. Every citizen should get one equally-weighted vote.

Monopolies

• Patents

  • Software Patents

    • Adaptive Streaming – Not Patent Eligible

      In this non-precedential decision, the Federal Circuit has affirmed the lower court’s finding that Adaptive’s asserted claims are ineligible under Section 101. In 2019, Adaptive sued Netflix in C.D. Cal. for patent infringement. Rather than filing its answer, Netflix immediately filed a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim. Fed. R. Civ. Pro. 12(b)(6). That motion was granted — case dismissed.

      The patent claims a personal broadcasting system that transcribes an incoming video into a more usable format. Us7047305 (1999 priority date). I subscribed to Netflix back in 2001 — receiving rental DVDs in the mail each month. Netflix has changed dramatically — and one bit of its process appears to be a user-based translation engine.

      Claim 39 at issue here requires a “broadcasting server” coupled to a “processor” with the capability of transcoding an incoming video signal from a first compression format into a second compression format “more suitable” for the client device — and available in multiple video stream outputs. A dependent claim includes the functionality of changing the compression output “in response to a change in bandwidth conditions.”

    • $2,000 Awarded for SITO Mobile Prior Art

      Unified is pleased to announce the PATROLL crowdsourcing contest winners, Sachin Srivastava and Preeti Dua, who split a cash prize of $2,000 for their prior art submissions for U.S. Patent 9,026,673. The patent is owned by SITO Mobile R&D IP, LLC, an NPE. The ’673 patent generally relates to the transmission of multiple digital media streams from a server to a client device, e.g., where one media stream may be a piece of requested media, and another media stream may be an advertisement. This patent has been asserted in district court against Hulu, Blue Scout Media, and FloSports for their respective streaming platforms and content distribution methods.

    • Voice Tech Corp patent determined to be likely invalid — Unified Patents

      On December 14, 2020, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) instituted trial on all challenged claims in an IPR filed by Unified against U.S. Patent 10,491,679, owned by Voice Tech Corp, an NPE. The ’679 patent relates to voice-activated computing. The patent is currently asserted against Mycroft AI Inc. for using open source, voice-related technologies.

Linux Weekly Roundup #108

We had a relatively peaceful week, but I have a feeling we can expect at least a few major releases this year.

Endless OS 3.9.1, Mageia 8-beta2, GeckoLinux 999.201205, and GeckoLinux 152.201210 have been released this week.

9to5Linux Weekly Roundup: December 13th, 2020

Big thank you again to all the donors and to everyone who followed us on social media. You guys rock! You know who you are and you’re awesome for helping me keep this Linux news website alive during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This week has been quite interesting with not so many exciting Linux news, but a few of them very interesting. TUXEDO Computers is relentless in launching new Linux laptops, Valve was awesome at enabling support for the Cyberpunk 2077 video game on Linux, and Linus Torvalds brought us the Linux 5.10 LTS kernel.

Desktop/Laptop

• Public lightweight sway developer desktop with OSTree and podman/toolbox

  One and a half year ago I switched to a self-built OSTree based minimal i3 desktop and never looked back. Despite running Fedora updates-testing and finding/reporting lots of regressions, I have never had a situation where a simple rpm-ostree rollback would not have saved the day. There is zero cruft accumulating, neither due to upgrade drift from config files nor due to piling up added/changed files in /usr. And development or trying something out are now more flexible and comfortable than ever, mostly thanks to the progress in the container space.

Audiocasts/Shows

• Going Linux #400 · Listener Experiences

  Stories from our listener minions help us to celebrate our milestone 400th episode! From chocolate chip cookies to to accessibility on Arch, we have something of interest to many.

• Linux Action News 167

  We explain the major changes to CentOS this week and break down the top four criticisms. Plus Google makes their Fuchsia intentions a bit more clear, and why Linux 5.10 is a BIG deal.

• Open Source Security Podcast Episode 239 – Door 14: Backdoors

  Josh and Kurt talk about backdoors in open source software

• Kubuntu Rocks Titan technology YouTuber Chris Titus

  As you know from our previous post, back in 2019 the Kubuntu team set to work collaborating with MindShare Management Ltd to bring a Kubuntu dedicated laptop to the market. Recently, Chris Titus from the ‘Chris Titus Tech’ YouTube channel acquired a Kubuntu Focus M2 for the purpose of reviewing it, and he was so impressed he has decided to keep it as his daily driver. That’s right; Chris has chosen the Kubuntu Focus M2 instead of the Apple MacBook Pro M1 that he had intended to get. That is one Awesome recommendation!

• Picom Has Too Many Forks: Which Ones Are Useful – YouTube

  There are some many picom forks out there and many of them are incredibly useful so today we’re going to go over this absolute mess of forks to see which ones you should actually look at as well as a bit of history on how picom and previously compton got into this state.

• Linux Mint 20.1 Backgrounds Slideshow

  In this video, we are looking at the beautiful backgrounds of the upcoming Linux Mint 20.1.

• Full Circle Weekly News #193

  Linux Coming to Apple M1 Macs

  https://www.patreon.com/marcan

  New Ubuntu Members

  https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-news-team/2020-December/002944.html

  https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/kernel-team/2020-December/115268.html

  https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-news-team/2020-December/002946.html

  Manjaro 20.2 Nibia Out

  https://manjaro.org/news/

  BlackArch 2020.12.1 Out

  https://blackarch.org/blog.html

  Nitrux 1.3.5 Out

  https://blackarch.org/blog.html

  KDE Plasma 5.20.4 Out

  https://kde.org/announcements/plasma-5.20.3-5.20.4-changelog/

  Cinnamon 4.8 Out

  https://9to5linux.com/cinnamon-4-8-desktop-environment-released-new-features

  OpenZFS 2.0 Out

  https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/releases/tag/zfs-2.0.0

  Linux Kernel 5.10 rc6 Out

  https://www.lkml.org/lkml/2020/11/29/239

  System76 Pangolin Announced

  https://system76.com/laptops/pangolin

• GNU World Order 384

  **soma** and **sox**.

Kernel Space

• You Can Now Install Linux Kernel 5.10 LTS on Your Linux Lite PC, Here’s How

  Linux kernel 5.10 is an LTS (Long-Term Support) release and brings several new features and various improvements, along with a bunch of updated and new drivers for better hardware support, so that alone might be a good reason to upgrade your kernel.

  Highlights of Linux kernel 5.10 LTS include support for the ARMv8.5 memory tagging extension, support for the SM2 digital-signature algorithm, support for Amazon Nitro enclaves, reduced latency of multiple file operations for the EXT4 file system, and the ability to transmit data on multiple flows simultaneously.

• Linux Kernel 5.10 is officially out now as a Long Term Support release | GamingOnLinux

  A brand new Long Term Support release is out now with the Linux Kernel 5.10, the very beating heart of the whole Linux system which brings plenty of new features and hardware support.

  With it being a new LTS, it’s going to get updates and bug fixes for a much longer time than usual providing a good solid base for at least two years for Linux distributions.

• Linus Torvalds Releases Linux Kernel 5.10 LTS: Here’s What’s New

  As usual, after two months of development, Linux creator Linus Torvalds has officially released a new mainline Linux Kernel 5.10. It is also the latest Long Term Support (LTS) kernel, which will be maintained and receive bug fixes for the next five years until 2026.

  Starting with the update on filesystem side, XFS filesystem now supports timestamps to the Year 2486 instead of earlier limitation to the Year 2038, and EXT4 supports fast commit mode for faster file overwrite performance.

• Linux Kernel 5.10 Released. This is What’s New

  A new, stable Linux Kernel 5.10 release is announced by Linus Torvalds. This is the last Kernel release of the year 2020 and it is the next Long Term Support (LTS) Kernel. It brings some interesting improvements across processors, graphics, ports, and file system areas.

• Linux Kernel 5.10 LTS Officially Released, This Is What’s New

  After seven weeks of development, Linux 5.10 is finally here as the latest and greatest kernel series for GNU/Linux distributions wanting top-notch hardware support. Not only that, but it’s a long-term supported (LTS) branch, which means that it will probably receive support over the next 5 years.

  Highlights of Linux kernel 5.10 LTS include support for the ARMv8.5 memory tagging extension, support for the SM2 digital-signature algorithm, support for the ISO 15765-2:2016 CAN transport protocol, support for the IGMPv3/MLDv2 multicast protocol, and support for Amazon Nitro enclaves.

• The 5.10 kernel has been released

  Significant changes in this release include support for the Arm memory tagging extension, restricted rings for io_uring, sleepable BPF programs, the process_madvise() system call, ext4 “fast commits”, and more. See the LWN merge-window summaries (part 1, part 2) and the KernelNewbies 5.10 page for more details.

• Linux 5.10 LTS Released As One Of The Biggest Kernel Releases In A While

  As expected, Linus Torvalds today officially released Linux 5.10. Besides being the last kernel release of 2020, this is a significant milestone in that it’s also a Long Term Support (LTS) kernel to be maintained for at least the next five years and also is a huge kernel update in general with many new features.

  Linux 5.10 features new hardware support including early bring-up around Intel Rocket Lake and Alder Lake, continued work on Intel Gen12/Xe Graphics, a number of storage/file-system improvements, and more. See our 10 most interesting features of Linux 5.10 or our complete Linux 5.10 feature overview.

• Linux Kernel 5.10 LTS Released

  Linux Kernel 5.10 LTS is now officially available for the download. It is the latest Long Term Support’ release and the team is planning to maintain Linux 5.10 until 2026 .

• Linux 5.10

  Ok, here it is - 5.10 is tagged and pushed out.
  
  I pretty much always wish that the last week was even calmer than it
  was, and that's true here too. There's a fair amount of fixes in here,
  including a few last-minute reverts for things that didn't get fixed,
  but nothing makes me go "we need another week". Things look fairly
  normal.
  
  It's mostly drivers - as it should be - with a smattering of fixes all
  over: networking, architectures, filesystems, tooling.. The shortlog
  is appended, and scanning it gives a good idea of what kind of things
  are there. Nothing that looks scary: most of the patches are very
  small, and the biggest one is fixing pin mapping definitions for a
  pincontrol driver.
  
  This also obviously means that the merge window for 5.11 will start
  tomorrow.  I already have a couple of pull requests pending - you guys
  know who you are, and thank you.
  
  The most notable thing about the 5.11 merge window will be obvious to
  anybody who takes a look at the calendar: realistically speaking, we
  only have one week before the holidays are upon us, and everybody is
  much too distracted. That means that I will be particularly strict
  about the whole "the merge window is for things that are ready
  *before* the merge window starts".
  
  Now, I'm sure you all want to go off for holidays too, and I'm
  actually surprised that I don't have more early pull requests pending.
  So I think the whole "everything you send me should have already been
  done" is something we can all sign up for. But exactly _because_ of
  the timing, I will simply not be very interested in any new late pull
  requests that come in the second week of the merge window: I expect to
  still be handling some of the backlog that week _anyway_, but I
  certainly do not want to get more of it.
  
  So if it's not already in linux-next, and if you aren't happy sending
  it in this upcoming week because it's not quite done yet, you should
  basically plan on not getting it into 5.11 at all. There will be
  releases after that one, don't worry.
  
  This has _technically_ been the rule before too, it's just that I
  generally haven't been all that hard-nosed about it, and have let
  things slide if it wasn't _too_ egregious. This time around I have
  fairly clear reasons why I'm just going to enforce that "it had better
  be ready before the merge window even opened" rule.
  
  If my overflow handling then ends up being interrupted by the
  holidays, I may end up delaying rc1 just to catch up, but I hope and
  expect that that won't even be needed. We'll see. But even if it does
  happen, it most certainly will _not_ mean that I will take pull
  requests that came in after the holidays.
  
  Actual fixes that would be valid even outside the merge window are
  obviously not affected by that rule.
  
               Linus
  

• Linux Kernel 5.10 LTS Released, This is What’s New

  An all-new Linux kernel release is here, so in this post we do our level best to rundown the core changes and key features ticking away at the heart of it.

  Linux 5.10 is the latest mainline kernel update (as of December 14) and the latest ‘Long Term Support’ release too. Kernel devs plan to maintain Linux 5.10 all the way until 2026 – one year longer than Linux 5.4 LTS.

  Linus Torvalds, Linux founder, announced the Linux 5.10 release on the Linux Kernel mailing list with his usual low-key flare, stating: “Ok, here it is – 5.10 is tagged and pushed out. I pretty much always wish that the last week was even calmer than it was, and that’s true here too.”

• AMD Smart Access Memory / Resizable BAR On Linux Still Ripe For Improvement – Phoronix

  Following Mesa 21.0 beginning to see AMD Smart Access Memory optimizations, I ran some benchmarks looking at the current state of S.A.M. / Resizable BAR support on Linux with Radeon graphics.

  As has been outlined previously, the Linux kernel has actually supported resizable BAR for a while (or Smart Access Memory as referred to by AMD) while on the user-space driver side just this past week with Mesa 21.0 did we begin seeing the mentioned RadeonSI improvements. Details on verifying if Resizable BAR support is enabled on Linux can be found via this forum thread.

• Open-Source Graphics Driver Updates For Linux 5.11 Have Lots Of Intel + AMD Presents – Phoronix

  While there are a lot of driver improvements throughout, as usual those on Intel HD/UHD/Iris/Xe Graphics and AMD Radeon graphics with their first-rate open-source graphics drivers have a lot of grand improvements to find with the forthcoming Linux 5.11 cycle.

  While Linux 5.10 isn’t even out yet (it should be released tonight barring any last minute problems), due to Direct Rendering Manager co-maintainer David Airlie of Red Hat going on holiday for the next week, he sent in the DRM feature pull early to Linus Torvalds. This includes all of the big ticket features expected on the DRM side with the Linux 5.11 cycle.

Applications

• Announcing CuteVNC

  Having a single screen connected to my PC, I was wondering if I could use my nice BQ M10 tablet running UBports as an additional screen. The idea was that if I could convince the X server to create a new virtual display, and then run the x11vnc server on it, I could then connect the tablet to it and enjoy my desktop on two screens. Yes, the M10 has not such a big display, but it couls still be useful to host a window with a mail or a chat client, so that I would not need to switch between applications just to check if new emails or chat messages have arrived (and I hate instant notifications, so I tend to disable them in every program that allows me to).

  Anyway, I digress. I found some articles, and specifically this question, that show how one can add a new virtual screen and connect to it via VNC. I tried it and it kind of worked, but there were some visual artifacts that annoyed me (most likely due to the AMDGPU drivers), so I’ll defer the creation of a demo video till when I’ll have figured out a better setup. But the main point is that the idea, in principle, can work.

Instructionals/Technical

• How To Install TeamSpeak Server on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS – idroot

  In this tutorial, we will show you how to install TeamSpeak Server on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, TeamSpeak is a VoIP (voice-over-Internet Protocol) solution first released in 2001 and most popular with those who play team-based online games. The software has two parts, a server, and a client, both of which can be installed on Windows, Mac, and Linux.

  This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you through the step by step installation of TeamSpeak on Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 18.04, 16.04, and any other Debian based distribution like Linux Mint.

• List or Show Tables in MySQL – Linux Hint

  MySQL is one of the most famous open-source and freely available DBMS (Database Management Software System). It has an easy-to-use interface and is famous for its speed. If you are doing a job as a database administrator in some big organization, you often need to go through a large number of databases and their tables. So, in this article, we are going to learn how we can list or show tables in the MySQL shell.

• Introduction to Btrfs Filesystem – Linux Hint

  Btrfs (B-Tree Filesystem) is a modern copy-on-write (CoW) filesystem for Linux. Btrfs aims to implement many advanced filesystem features while focusing on fault tolerance, repair, and easy administration. The btrfs filesystem is designed to support the requirement of high performance and large storage servers. It is suitable for petabyte-scale data centers as well as cellular smartphones.In this article, I am going to discuss the Btrfs filesystem and its features. So, let’s get started.

• MySQL Update Statement – Linux Hint

  MySQL is an open-source Database Management system, which can be used for both small and large projects. Developed by The Oracle Corporation, it uses standard SQL behind it. In database management, CRUD operations are a kind of basic requirement to know.

  In this article, we will learn to update the data in MySQL tables using MySQL’s provided UPDATE statement. An UPDATE statement is basically a DML (Data Manipulation Language) statement because it modifies or updates the data.

• How to Use Aircrack-ng – Linux Hint

  Most of the time, people never think about the network to which they are connected. They never think how secure that network is and how much they risk their confidential data on a daily basis. You can run vulnerability checks on your wifi networks by using a very powerful tool called Aircrack-ng and Wireshark. Wireshark is used to monitor network activity. Aircrack-ng is more like an aggressive tool that lets you hack and give access to Wireless connections. Thinking as an intruder has always been the safest way to protect yourself against a hack. You might be able to grasp the exact actions that an intruder will take to obtain access to your system by learning about aircrack. You can then conduct compliance checks on your own system to ensure that it is not insecure.

  Aircrack-ng is a full set of software designed to test WiFi network security. It is not just a single tool but a collection of tools, each of which performs a particular purpose. Different areas of wifi security can be worked on, like monitoring the Access Point, testing, attacking the network, cracking the wifi network, and testing it. Aircrack’s key objective is to intercept the packets and decipher the hashes to break the passwords. It supports nearly all the new wireless interfaces. Aircrack-ng is an improved version of an outdated tool suite Aircrack, ng refers to the New Generation. Some of the awesome tools that work together in taking out a bigger task.

• How to do Network Configuration on Oracle Linux 8? – Linux Hint

  Before using the Internet on any device particularly a computer system, it is always recommended that you perform certain necessary network configurations on that device. These configurations are done to ensure that your Internet works smoothly and with all the desired protocols with which you want it to run. Also, whenever your Internet is lagging or you face some trouble while connecting to it, you are always asked to check the network configurations to figure out if something is messed up over there.

  Once you fix the issues with your network configurations, you can gain back access to your Internet connection. That is why network configurations are considered extremely useful in any operating system. Today, we will be learning the method through which you can easily do network configuration on your Oracle Linux 8 system which is a relatively newer flavor of the Linux operating system.

• Configure Kubelet Out of Resource Handling, or How to Stop EKS Kubernetes Nodes from Going Down

  Kubelet has the ability to specify eviction thresholds that trigger the kubelet to reclaim resources. We are going to use them with our EKS worker nodes.

• How to install MuseScore on a Chromebook

  Today we are looking at how to install MuseScore on a Chromebook. Please follow the video/audio guide as a tutorial where we explain the process step by step and use the commands below.

• How to Search files with case-insensitive names in Linux – TecAdmin

  find is the basic Unix command used to search files recursively under a directory tree. It is default available in all the Linux operating systems.

  All the Linux command line users must be aware about uses of Linux find command. It The find command traverse under a directory tree and capable to search files or directory based on defined search pattern. It also provides option to search files with names in uppercase or lowercase or mixed case.

• The 20 Best Raspberry Pi Books For Beginner and Expert Developers

  The Raspberry Pi is a cheap, small-sized PC that connects to a PC screen or TV, and it utilizes a standard console and mouse. It is a competent little gadget that empowers individuals of any age to learn how to program in dialects like Python and Scratch, thereby making it super beneficial. These are the coolest things that can be made with a Raspberry pi – a Homemade smartphone, Netbook, a Solar weather station, Twitter Bot, a multi-room music system, Radio, a portable gaming console, Microwave, etc. That is why it has become quite important and has also motivated many programmers to learn Raspberry Pi, and for that, you will require a perfect set of Raspberry Pi books to proceed.

• 5 Funny Linux commands, Literally, we can do?

  Every time we come with useful commands or How to? But this time, I thought, why not show some funny Linux commands.

  Open your terminal and get started for the fun journey of Linux Terminals. I’ll cover for both Debian (apt) and RHEL (yum) based distribution.

  Fun journey begins : )

Wine or Emulation

• 3 New Games You Can Play With Proton Since Nov. 2020

  This is going to be a short update this time around. Why only 3 games you might say? I don’t know, maybe because the biggest game of all time was supposed to be released in November 2020? Or it could just mere coincidence…

  [...]

  So that’s it for now… you can go back to playing Cyberpunk 2077 (if it works on your machine/config).

Games

• OBS Studio 26.1 rolls out with Virtual Camera output on Linux | GamingOnLinux

  After only two Release Candidates for testing, OBS Studio 26.1 has now officially rolled out with some fun new features for all supported platforms. If you’re planning to do any sort of video creation on Linux, OBS Studio is now practically the standard. It’s our go-to solution for everything when it comes to video creation (and plain audio recording since it has some easy real-time filters) and being free and open source is a nice big plus.

  This release follows shortly after announcing YouTube as a new sponsor, so they have plenty of funding to keep bringing on new and advanced feature releases.

• Grab an up to date MangoHud with NVML, GOverlay and vkBasalt on Ubuntu with a new PPA | GamingOnLinux

  For users on Ubuntu-based distributions, PPAs are often needed for you to get the latest and greatest software since if you’re not using Snaps or Flatpaks (and sometimes they don’t work due to the containers), a lot of software is stuck in place until a newer version of Ubuntu.

  What’s the fuss here then? Well, Ubuntu and Ubuntu-based distribution users can now grab the excellent MangoHud gaming overlay, the vkBasalt Vulkan post processing layer and the GOverlay application for managing them both in a tidy UI all nicely up to date from this PPA. The build of MangoHud included also has NVML (NVIDIA Management Library) enabled, meaning out of the box it should allow showing GPU metrics from NVIDIA GPUs.

• Quirky family-friendly animal racing game Slide releasing February 2021 | GamingOnLinux

  Enjoy your family-friendly kart-racing styled arcade games? Slide was pretty good from the demo we tried back in September, and it now has a release date. French indie developer Oneiric Worlds announced it’s going to release February, 17th 2021 for Linux, macOS and Windows.

  In Slide, Animal Race, you can play with up to 8 total players, as you each ride cute and colourful animals in vibrant environments. Jump to avoid obstacles, use bonuses and master the diving mechanics on the crazy tracks to outrun the horde! Or you can just take a tour and enjoy the view, while listening to the sympho-ethnic soundtrack. That’s up to you. The game is family-friendly and accessible to beginners and kids thanks to autopilot options; but to win the race, you’ll truly have to master all the game mechanics.

Distributions

• Best Free Linux Distributions for Desktops and Servers

  Almost every Linux distribution is available to download for free. However, there are some editions (or distros) may ask for a fee in order to purchase it. For instance, the ultimate edition of Zorin OS is not free and needs to be purchased.

  If you already know about some of the best Linux distributions available, you probably do not need this list. It is meant for absolute beginners who may have had a misconception that Linux distros need to be purchased.

  So, in this article, I focus on the free Linux distributions that you can try, whether its for general purpose home usage, i.e. desktop or for a production-grade server.

• Reviews

  • Review: TTOS Linux 1.1.2

    The TTOS Linux distribution is based on Debian’s Stable branch and the main edition of TTOS ships with the KDE Plasma desktop environment. There are other editions of TTOS mentioned on the project’s Downloads page which ship with a variety of other desktops such as GNOME and Trinity in case people want an alternative to Plasma. Though I noticed these alternative editions are distributed under separate SourceForge projects, making them appear to be community editions. I downloaded the main Plasma edition for my trial. This edition is available as a 64-bit (x86_64) build exclusively.

    The TTOS website does not provide much information on what sets this distribution apart from other projects, the exceptions being a tool called PerformaSync. Not a lot of information is presented, but it appears as though PerformaSync provides on-line storage and file synchronization, similar to Nextcloud.

    Usually I don’t talk much about project websites, but this one seems to be unusually terse and it gave me spare time to poke around while my copy of their ISO was downloading. One thing which stood out is the project’s logo is saved under a filename which identifies it as “apple touch”. I’m not sure why TTOS would save their logo filename as “apple touch”, but it was one of what turned out to be several visual quirks of the project and this puzzle set the tone for my experience with this distribution.

    [...]

    If I had to sum up my impressions of TTOS in a word it would be “unfinished”. Despite being on the DistroWatch waiting list for over a year, the project feels as though it is still on the drawing board. The website offers very little information about the distribution or its add-on sync product. There is virtually no documentation, the wiki is empty, there are no support forums or mailing lists. The documentation links in the system installer don’t provide release information, the welcome screen features typos and labels that don’t fit on their buttons. We can’t restart the computer from within Plasma, which is an unusual limitation.

    The Debian core of the operating system is pretty solid, with a lot of software available, but TTOS doesn’t appear to offer anything over plain Debian with the KDE Plasma desktop installed. It might actually be a less pleasant experience since GTK-based applications are practically unusable with the default TTOS theme settings. Not to mention TTOS is a surprisingly heavy distribution on disk and in memory without a clear benefit to excuse the extra weight.

    This distribution feels like it was rushed out the door, possibly to promote the commercial PerformaSync service, without taking time to test it and polish up the various issues.

• PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva/OpenMandriva Family

  • Mageia 8 Beta 2 Linux distro now available with KDE Plasma, GNOME, and Xfce

    Development of Mageia 8 seems to be moving along nicely, which is great news for users of that Linux-based operating system. Back in August, we shared that the first Beta of the distribution was available for testing, and now today, the second Beta arrives. As with the first Beta, the second is available with your choice of three desktop environments — KDE Plasma, GNOME, and Xfce.

    “We are happy to announce the release of Mageia 8 Beta 2. After a long time since the beta 1, we look forward to hearing your feedback and thoughts so that we can continue to get Mageia 8 ready for release. As we said in a previous post, a lot of work had to be done for the base system upgrade, java, kernel, and the graphical stack. These upgrades are now in a state that allows for the Beta 2 ISOs to be built and tested,” explains The Mageia Development Team.

• IBM/Red Hat/Fedora

  • Fedora users, move to Debian or openSUSE before Red Hat shafts you

    Users of the Fedora Linux community distribution would do well to switch over to an alternative like Debian GNU/Linux or openSUSE before Red Hat leaves them in the lurch too.

  • Centos and the end of a horrible year (Part II

    2020 will be for most people one of the worst years in their living memory. The world is under lockdown because of SARS-Corona Virus 2 or better Covid-19. As I’m a member of a risk group, my social life is already for almost 9 month limited to telephone and video calls.

    And on top of all that, in the last month of 2020 two of my favorite software projects changed directions and removed the main reasons why I’m using them. This blog post is about Centos. The Graylog Blog post was Part I.

  • Jens Kuehnel: Graylog or the end of a horrible year (Part I)

    2020 will be – for most people – one of the worst years in their living memory. The world is under lockdown because of SARS-Corona Virus 2 or Covid-19. As I’m part of a risk group, my social life is for almost 9 month limited to telephone and video calls.

    And on top of it all – two of my favorite software projects dramatically changed directions in December 2020 and removing the main reasons why I’m using them. This blog post is about Graylog. The Centos Blogpost comes later.

  • Ben Cotton: How Do You Fedora?

    If you follow the Fedora’ Community Blog, there’s a good chance you already know who Ben is.

    Ben’s Linux journey started around late 2002. Frustrated with some issues on using Windows XP, and starting a new application administrator role at his university where some services were being run on FreeBSD. A friend introduced him to Red Hat Linux, when Ben decided it made sense to get more practice with Unix-like operating systems. He switched to Fedora full-time in 2006, after he landed a job as a Linux system administrator.

    Since then, his career has included system administration, people management, support engineering, development, and marketing. Several years ago, he even earned a Master’s degree in IT Project Management. The variety of experience has helped Ben learn how to work with different groups of people. “A lot of what I’ve learned has come from making mistakes. When you mess up communication, you hopefully do a better job the next time.”

• Canonical/Ubuntu Family

  • Canonical Releases New Ubuntu Kernel Updates to Fix Data Corruption Bug

    The Ubuntu kernel updates published on December 2nd introduced a regression in Linux kernel’s software RAID10 driver, which, when used with fstrim, could lead to data corruption. The bug was also reported by users on Ubuntu’s Launchpad.

    Therefore, Canonical released today a new set of kernels for Ubuntu 20.10, Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, and Ubuntu 16.04 LTS systems on all supported architectures to address the said regression.

Devices/Embedded

• Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

  • PUBG Mobile 1.2 beta APK download link update for Android released – Direct link, how to download and install

  • 25+ forgotten or hidden shortcuts for your Android homescreen

  • Top 10 Best Android One Phones Usas 2020

  • LG Android 11 beta finally begins but for one phone only

  • T-Mobile pauses Galaxy S20 update to Android 11

  • [Update: Dec. 14] Sony Android 11 update: List of eligible devices & release date

  • Ensure you WiFi network is ready for the Android 11 QPR1 security update

  • How to FaceTime on Android (or the best alternatives)

  • How to play GTA 5 on Android devices through PS Remote Play: Step-by-step guide for beginners

  • How To Download Cyberpunk 2077 On Android

  • ‘Fingerprint-jacking’ attack technique manipulates Android UI

  • Google Chrome for Android brings a new set of menu icons

  • Doogee S96 Pro Review: Rugged Android Phone

  • Infinix X1 Smart Android TV launched, price starts at Rs 11,999

  • Google Tests AI-Powered ‘Look to Speak’ Tech on Android

  • 5 Android apps you shouldn’t miss this week – Android Apps Weekly

  • 24 new Android games from the last week: The best, worst, and everything in between (12/07/20 – 12/13/20)

  • Android Gaming Headlines and Updates

  • Vote for the Android Police 2020 Readers’ Choice Smartphone of the Year

  • Samsung Galaxy A52 5G with Android 11 spotted again: Expected launch date, price, specs

  • POCO X3 NFC receives new MIUI 12 update while Android 11 waits in the wings

Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

• Openness/Sharing/Collaboration

  • Open Access/Content

    • Open access: A problem way beyond one nation one subscription

      The idea of OA emerged with the philosophy that the investors (taxpayers) must have seamless access to the knowledge generated from their investment. This movement gained momentum in the early 2000s, largely fuelled by Budapest (2002), Berlin (2003), and Bethesda (2003) declarations. They challenged the profit-based scientific publication model that had hijacked research publications for many decades and campaigned for scholarly publications to be free to read and reproduce with proper citation.

      The idea of OA emerged with the philosophy that the investors (taxpayers) must have seamless access to the knowledge generated from their investment. This movement gained momentum in the early 2000s, largely fuelled by Budapest (2002), Berlin (2003), and Bethesda (2003) declarations. They challenged the profit-based scientific publication model that had hijacked research publications for many decades and campaigned for scholarly publications to be free to read and reproduce with proper citation.

      The rat race of citations and rankings

      the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore has been spearheading the OA movement in India under the leadership of Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam, known as “Mr. Open Access”. Recently, the ‘open access week’ was celebrated where Prof. Jean-Claude GUÉDON, professor at the Université de Montréal and one of the signatories of the Budapest Declaration, was invited as the key speaker. He emphasised how the scholarly journals are entirely driven by the research preferences of an elite coterie of commercial editors, reflecting mainly the North-Atlantic business interests, and largely ignoring the global south. Journal ranking, impact factors, citations, etc. are the tools to attract researchers and improve market share and ultimately lead to making ‘science a commodity’.

• Programming/Development

  • Eagle’s Path: rra-c-util 8.4 (2020-12-13)

    I’ve released a new version of my collection of utility libraries, Autoconf macros, and similar support infrastructure, primarily to include changes in the upcoming remctl and INN releases.

  • Russ Allbery: remctl 3.17

    remctl is a simple GSS-API-based RPC system designed to be as trivial to deploy as possible for sites already using Kerberos.

    I owe various people deeper reviews of remctl feature changes, but alas this release is not that. This is a bit of a stopgap maintenance release primarily to fix a testing problem on Debian that booted remctl out of testing. The basic problem is that a lot of test machinery assumes that every system will have an IPv4 address available, but this is not necessarily true on modern systems. This release only fixes the tests that don’t use Kerberos. The tests that require Kerberos have much deeper assumptions that the IPv4 loopback will be available, and will require later work (hampered by the fact that I personally don’t have such an environment readily available that also has access to a KDC and need to construct something in Docker or some similar container system).

    This release also adds support for PHP 8 in anticipation of a possible Debian migration (some minor C source cleanup was required, nothing major), fixes some Python build system problems, and incorporates the changes from rra-c-util 8.4.

  • Speeding up the compilation-startup cycle when fine-tuning your code | agateau.com

    Our computers are getting faster and faster, but compilation and startup times are still something we want to avoid.

    One situation where waiting for compilation and startup to finish feels like a waste is when you are fine-tuning an aspect of your application. For example when you are adjusting spacing or colors in a user interface. Having to wait between each iteration not only costs us time, it also makes us less likely to do more experiments.

    In this article I am going to show a few tricks to reduce these pains.

  • What’s new in PHP 7.4? | LibreByte

    The PHP development team announced, on november 2019, the immediate availability of PHP 7.4.0. This release marks the fourth feature update to the PHP 7 series.

  • Perl/Raku

    • Day 14: Writing Faster Raku code, Part I – Raku Advent Calendar

      Last year, in Perl land, I discussed the result of my attempts to optimize the performance of an expression parser which is part of my Perl-based Fortran source-to-source compiler. An expression parser takes strings representing expressions in a programming language (in my case Fortran) and turns it into a data structure called a parse tree, which the compiler uses for further analysis and code generation.

      I have recently been writing quite a bit of Raku code but so far I had not looked at its performance. Out of curiosity I decided to rewrite and optimise this Fortran expression parser in Raku.

    • The Twelve Days of Dancer, 2020 Edition | Jason A. Crome [blogs.perl.org]

      Need some joy this holiday season? Head over to the Dancer Advent Calendar for this year’s Twelve Days of Dancer. With a little help from our friends, we’ve put together a 12-day mini advent calendar featuring some great software built in Dancer, some helpful tips and tricks, new features, and more.

  • Rust

    • Philip Chimento: Advent of Rust 12: Typo the Ship Around

      It’s once again time for another chronicle of teaching myself the Rust programming language, by doing the programming puzzles on Advent of Code 2020. That’s all I have to say by way of introductions!

  • Java

    • Enterprise Java Transformation Continues with Jakarta EE 9

      The open-source Jakarta EE Project released its first major update in a year on Dec. 8 with the launch of Jakarta EE 9.

      Jakarta EE is an open-source project run by the Eclipse Foundation. It’s the successor to Java EE, which was the enterprise edition platform of Java, where development was led by a group of vendors including Oracle. In February 2018, Oracle announced that it was going to transition Java EE development over to the Eclipse Foundation to make the effort more open.

      The Jakarta EE 8 release in September 2019 marked the first release of Java EE under the direction of the Eclipse Foundation, but it was only an initial step as the code itself still used the javax.* package namespace. That changed with the release of Jakarta EE 9, with that Java namespace changing to jakarta.*, creating a new foundation for future enterprise releases. Beyond just the namespace, the process by which Jakarta EE is put together is very different from how it was when the project was known as Java EE.

Standards/Consortia

• fre:ac is an open source audio converter for Windows, Linux and Mac

  fre:ac supports many audio and video input formats including FLAC, MP3, AAC, WAV, OGG, OGA, APE, MAC, WMA, MP1, MP2, M4A, M4B, M4R, AIF, AIFF, AIFC, CAF, W64, FR64, AU SND, VOC, IFF, SVX, SF, PAF, PVF, WVE, HTK, AVR, SPX, AC3, MP4, 3GP, AMR, AEA, AT3, AA3, OMA, OMG, DSF, DFF, DSS, DTS, FLC, F4V, M4V, ISMA, MKV, MKA, MLP, MOV, MPG, MPEG, QCP, RA, WEBM, WMV, OFR, AVI, CUE and TAK.

New Book Highlights Need for Solidarity for Humans to Survive Global Collapse

Education

• Rundown Schools in Low-Income Communities Face Long-Term Closures Amid COVID

• Failing Students Need Support, Not Blame

  Students don’t fail because they are lazy. They fail because something is wrong in their lives—and right now, so much is wrong.

• Academics must not rage against ‘death by blank screen’

  I have been reflecting on my own online experience as both teacher and learner. When I was delivering programmes to 50 to 100 participants over the summer, I sometimes taught for hours without seeing anyone’s face. I wanted interaction, so I did have the feeling that I was getting less engagement than I would expect at “normal” times. On the other hand, I am conscious that when I attend development sessions as a participant, we are sometimes encouraged to switch our cameras off (to “conserve bandwidth”, according to the explanation at one event). I also have to admit that my newfound anonymity had positive aspects: it meant I didn’t have to stare at the assembled faces or, perhaps worse, at my own.

  So what do my students have to say when I ask about their blank screens? They tend not to refer to their own or their peers’ lack of engagement. Instead, they talk about feeling vulnerable, about being judged and about concerns they have about their surroundings. Others say their devices do not have cameras or that their cameras are broken. Whether or not this is the case, it is certainly true that some of our students are accessing sessions on their phones – whether by choice or because this is the only device they have access to.

  But eventually we come back to the core question. Is presenting a blank screen to the world rude, unprofessional or disrespectful, as some academics argue, and so something to be challenged or “punished”? Or is it, as many students tell me, safe, inclusive and a way of reducing anxiety caused by Zoom fatigue?

Health/Nutrition

• OSHA Is Helping Employers Get Away With Underreporting Health Care Worker Deaths

• Lighter Coal Regulations May Mean More Covid-19 Deaths

  Addressing emission standards, pollution, and environmental protections are necessities now.

• The Risk in Suspending Vaccine Patent Rules [Ed: More shilling for vaccine monopolies with patents; this is Wall Street killing people for profit!]

• People Are Going Hungry as Trump’s Food Aid Program Runs Out of Money

  If the program’s funding is not renewed, it will leave many Americans high and dry for the holiday season and beyond. And food pantries are already feeling it. Northern New York stopped receiving Farmers to Families boxes entirely since August, months before the program was scheduled to run out, WCAX 3 reported.

  According to Feeding America, a hunger relief non-profit, the US is seeing record levels of child hunger, and as many as 17 million children will experience food insecurity this year alone. And the organization projects that 15.6 percent of American households are without enough food, a more than four percent increase over 2015. This uncertainty and lack of supplies is pushing American families — and food banks — to the limit.

Integrity/Availability

• Proprietary

  • Security

    • [Crackers] backed by Russian government reportedly breached US government agencies [iophk: Windows TCO]

      Reuters reported that in addition to [cracking] Treasury and the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), the hackers may have breached other US government entities.

      Government officials considered the [crack] dire enough that the National Security Council held an emergency meeting at the White House on Saturday.

    • Suspected Russian [attackers] spied on U.S. Treasury emails – sources

      The U.S. government has not publicly identified who might be behind the [attack], but three of the people familiar with the investigation said Russia is currently believed to be responsible for the attack. Two of the people said that the breaches are connected to a broad campaign that also involved the recently disclosed hack on FireEye, a major U.S. cybersecurity company with government and commercial contracts.

      In a statement posted here to Facebook, the Russian foreign ministry described the allegations as another unfounded attempt by the U.S. media to blame Russia for cyberattacks against U.S. agencies.

      [...]

      The [attackers] are “highly sophisticated” and have been able to trick the Microsoft platform’s authentication controls, according to a person familiar with the incident, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not allowed to speak to the press.

    • U.S. Government Agencies Hit by [Attackers] During Software Update

      “We have identified a global campaign that introduces a compromise into the networks of public and private organizations through the software supply chain,” FireEye said in a blog post late Sunday. “This compromise is delivered through updates to a widely-used IT infrastructure management software — the Orion network monitoring product from SolarWinds.”

      The series of attacks could rank it among the worst in recent memory, as Austin, Texas-based SolarWinds Corp. sells technology products to a Who’s Who list of of sensitive targets. These include the State Department, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Naval Information Warfare Systems Command, the FBI, all five branches of the U.S. military, and 425 corporations out of the Fortune 500, according to the company’s website and government data.

    • Researchers underline care taken to craft SolarWinds trojan campaign

      Researchers from FireEye and Microsoft claim to have discovered a global intrusion campaign, using the Orion network monitoring system sold by SolarWinds, with a trojan being implanted into a file which was part of updates for the product; the compromised file was given the name SUNBURST. The software runs on Windows.

    • SolarWinds product used to attack private, public sector: FireEye claim

      American cyber security firm FireEye, which last week said it had suffered a breach and lost its attack tools, says it has identified a global campaign to compromise public and private sector bodies through corruption of software supply chains, using software that runs on Windows.

    • Windows MountLocker ransomware working through affiliates: claim

      Researchers from the Blackberry Research and Intelligence Team say they have been tracking the activities of affiliates of the MountLocker ransomware group, another one of the numerous ransomware groups that attacks Microsoft’s Windows operating system.

    • Attackers hit US Treasury through Microsoft Office 365; SolarWinds opens door to others

      Microsoft software has once again proved to be the weak link and opened the path for cyber attacks, this time to the US Treasury Department and an entity that deals with Internet and telco policy. The network management software SolarWinds appears to have opened the door for other agencies to be attacked.

    • Auto services firm Inchcape hit by Windows Ransomexx ransomware

      Automotive services provider Inchcape Australia appears to have been compromised by the Windows Ransomexx ransomware, with the cyber criminals who hit the company leaking some data that they stole, on the dark web. The company has about 1500 employees in Australia.

    • Privacy/Surveillance

      • GOP Lawmaker Claims ‘Trump Is Listening to the Many of Us Who Are Urging Him to #PardonSnowden’

        The NSA whistleblower has used his platform to pressure the president to pardon someone other than himself: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

      • Tech Giants Gird for Business Threats Under Strict New EU Laws

        The new Digital Markets Act, set to be proposed by the European Union on Tuesday, targets so-called gatekeeper companies, platforms with the power to control distribution in their markets.

        Such platforms will be prohibited from giving preferential treatment to their own products and services, along with other practices. They won’t be allowed to use data from competitors that sell on their marketplace, for instance, or use data about rivals obtained through advertising activities, according to a person familiar with the matter.

      • Microsoft patents tech to score meetings using body language, facial expressions, other data

        Microsoft is facing criticism for its new “Productivity Score” technology, which can measure how much individual workers use email, chat and other digital tools. But it turns out the company has even bigger ideas for using technology to monitor workers in the interest of maximizing organizational productivity.

        Newly surfaced Microsoft patent filings describe a system for deriving and predicting “overall quality scores” for meetings using data such as body language, facial expressions, room temperature, time of day, and number of people in the meeting. The system uses cameras, sensors, and software tools to determine, for example, “how much a participant contributes to a meeting vs performing other tasks (e.g., texting, checking email, browsing the Internet).”

      • Mobile ECG device firm AliveCor sues Apple for alleged patent infringement

        Medical device company AliveCor has levied a lawsuit against Apple alleging that the Apple Watch electrocardiogram feature infringes on a trio of its patents.

        The lawsuit, lodged in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas on Monday, claims that the ECG functionality on the Apple Watch Series 4 and later infringes on its intellectual property related to use wearable sensors to improve cardiac monitoring technology.

Defence/Aggression

• ICE Is Targeting Women in Sanctuary With Obscure Laws and Retaliatory Fines

• Nothing To See Here, Just Marauding Neo-Fascists Wearing Frocks

• “In Case There Was Any Doubt Regarding ‘Stand By’”: Four People Stabbed After Pro-Trump DC Rally

  “This is all on you, Republicans. You have enabled all of this.”

• Four People Stabbed After Pro-Trump Rally Attended by Far Right Groups in DC

• Four stabbed after Proud Boys, told by Trump to “stand back and stand by,” descended on DC for march

  The Washington Post reported late Saturday that “in smaller numbers than their gathering last month, they roamed from the Capitol to the Mall and back again, seeking inspiration from speakers who railed against the Supreme Court, Fox News, and President-elect Joe Biden. The crowds cheered for recently pardoned former national security adviser Michael Flynn, marched with conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, and stood in awe of a flyover from what appeared to be Marine One.”

• Russian nuclear submarine test-fires 4 missiles

  A Russian nuclear submarine on Saturday successfully test-fired four intercontinental ballistic missiles in a show of readiness of Moscow’s nuclear forces amid tension with the U.S.

  The Defense Ministry said that the Vladimir Monomakh submarine of the Pacific Fleet launched four Bulava missiles in quick succession from an underwater position in the Sea of Okhotsk. Their dummy warheads hit their designated targets on the Chiza shooting range in the Arkhangelsk region in northwestern Russia more than 5,500 kilometers (over 3,400 miles) away, the ministry said in a statement.

• Will Donald Trump’s ‘Legacy’ Be A War With Iran?

  While publicly the Pompeo odyssey was linked to “normalisation” of Arab diplomatic ties with Israel, this was a mere sideshow: Netanyahu is believed to have sought Saudi backing for a military confrontation with Iran, which Saudi sources say the prince was reluctant to support.

• Nigeria school attack: Gunmen who seized children in Katsina ‘surrounded’

  Ten children are reportedly being held captive, Garba Shehu said, far fewer than the number staff reported missing.

  About 800 pupils were enrolled at the all-boys school in Katsina state and about half remain unaccounted for.

• Parents Pray for Hundreds of Students Kidnapped in Nigeria’s Katsina

  Attacks by armed gangs, widely referred to as bandits, are common throughout northwestern Nigeria. The groups typically attack civilians, stealing or kidnapping them for ransom. Islamist militants, who attack security and civilian targets, are more common in the northeastern part of the country.

  There is growing anger with the precarious security situation in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation. Late last month, Islamist militants killed scores of farmers in northeastern Borno state, beheading some of them.

Environment

• Joe Biden should heed environmentalists’ calls, become first plastic-free prez: Activist

  On Tuesday, the Plastic Pollution Coalition, Greenpeace, and over 500 other activist groups rolled out the Presidential Plastics Action Plan, which urges Biden to take eight executive actions to tackle plastic pollution and become a “Plastic Free President.” Among those eight executive actions are suspensions of subsidies for plastic producers and termination of government purchases of single-use plastic, according to the advocacy group.

• A Roadmap for the Biden-Harris Administration: Redesigning Farm Systems for the Climate Crisis

  A just transition for farming must not only consider reforms to farm policy, but also aligned reforms in financial, trade, environmental, and competition policy.

• Energy

  • Russia’s Forgotten Nuclear Disaster

    Government workers descended on the small towns in and around Chelyabinsk, twenty of which were soon evacuated. Around ten thousand people, mostly peasants, were forced out, leaving their pets and possessions behind. Farmers were instructed to slaughter their cows, destroy fertile farmland, and kill off their crops. Their livelihoods and way of life were destroyed, and no reason was given as to why they had to take such drastic measures so quickly.

  • China’s carbon neutrality comes up short against dirty Belt and Road

    China’s continuing investments in dirty energy in developing countries runs counter to its promise of reaching carbon neutrality by 2060.

    The construction of coal-fired plants carries weight in China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a multi-trillion-dollar project that aims to fund infrastructure in partnering countries and increase China’s regional clout. Between 2000 and 2018, 23.1 percent of the US$251 billion (NT$7 trillion) invested by China’s two biggest policy banks on overseas energy projects was spent on coal plants, AFP said.

Finance

• To Win Georgia and the Senate, Democrats Need to Go All-In on $15 Minimum Wage

  Georgia is ripe for this kind of economic message.

• Bezos, McConnell, and COVID Capitalism

  She said that six of her co-workers had tested positive for COVID since October 22, because “safe social distancing is not only being ignored but discouraged,” adding that “when we express our discomfort to management, we are yelled at about filling orders faster, or told that we can take a leave of absence without pay.”

• If Democrats Want to Succeed, They Will Have to Implement Policies That Primarily Benefit the Working Class

  Progressives cannot just sit by and expect Biden or the Democratic Party to do the right thing.

• The Effect of Tax Avoidance Crackdown on Corporate Innovation [Ed: "Innovation" as meaningless buzzword used to subvert accountability for corporate crimes]

  To constrain the use of intangible assets in tax-motivated state income shifting, many U.S. state governments adopted addback statutes. Addback statutes reduce the tax benefits that firms can gain from creating intangible assets such as patents. Using a sample of U.S. public firms, we examine the effect of addback statutes on corporate innovation behavior. First, the adoption of addback statutes leads to a 4.77 percentage point decrease in the number of patents and a 5.12 percentage point decrease in the number of patent citations. Second, the “disappearing patents” resulting from addback statutes have significant economic value. Third, after a state adopts an addback statute, a firm with material subsidiaries in that state assigns fewer patents to subsidiaries in zero-tax states, whereas the number of patents assigned to the other states does not change. Overall, our findings suggest that addback statutes impede corporate innovation.

AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

• America’s Political Divide: A Modest Proposal

  The idea of “one America” might be passé.

• Donald Trump and the Triumph of White Identity Politics

  And when it comes to the course of US politics, there is the distinct stench of putrefaction. And, while America’s putrescent corpus decays further, the unmistakable rasp of circling vultures becomes inescapable, the smell overwhelming.

  Enter: Donald Trump – the vulture made flesh. And, as the President-elect circles high above his prey, awaiting the moment that he and his Wall Street-Pentagon flock can begin their feast, it remains for the rest of us to consider just what we’ve lived through, and how the history of this low-water mark will be written.

• Paper Ballots Played a Key Role in Defending the Integrity of the 2020 Election

• The Israel-Morocco peace deal Donald Trump has brokered is risky

  That old conflict kicked off in 1975, when Morocco annexed Western Sahara after Spain, the colonial power, pulled out. Polisario, which the UN considers the legitimate representative of the Sahrawi people, resisted—but they were outnumbered and outgunned. With Morocco in control of about two-thirds of the territory, and Polisario controlling the other third, the UN brokered a ceasefire deal in 1991 that promised the Sahrawis a referendum on independence. Morocco, though, has obstructed the process. The vote has yet to take place.

• MAGA Protesters Chant ‘Destroy the GOP’ at Pro-Trump Rally

  Despite these protesters’ efforts, the Electoral College is still scheduled to vote on Monday, and the vote will make Biden’s victory official.

• House Democrat says a provision in the 14th Amendment means some GOP members shouldn’t even be seated

  Pascrell cites Article 1, Section 5 of the Constitution, which gives each chamber of Congress final authority over membership, as well as Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which says:

  No person shall be a senator or representative in Congress, or elector of president and vice president, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

  “Stated simply, men and women who would act to tear the United States government apart cannot serve as members of the Congress,” writes the longtime Trump critic.

• Chaos in Washington as Trump refuses to concede, Republican leader suggests secession of pro-Trump states

  A spokeswoman for the Metropolitan Police Department said they had treated several people with stab wounds and had arrested six for brawling. At least one police officer was also injured in the clashes. In the evening, police shut down traffic in parts of downtown Washington and sealed off Black Lives Matter Plaza near the White House.

• Democrat asks Pelosi to refuse to seat lawmakers supporting Trump’s election challenges

  Pelosi’s office didn’t comment on Pascrell’s request, but in a Dear Colleague letter sent Friday evening, Pelosi said the Republicans are “subverting the Constitution by their reckless and fruitless assault on our democracy which threatens to seriously erode public trust in our most sacred democratic institutions, and to set back our progress on the urgent challenges ahead.”

Freedom of Information/Freedom of the Press

• Rafael Correa on Venezuela, Assange, and ‘preventing the total destruction of our homeland’

Civil Rights/Policing

• Let Everybody Vote, Even If They’re Incarcerated

  What value is a democracy that actively seeks to silence the voices of its most vulnerable citizens?

• Husband gave triple talaq from US over phone: Hyderabad woman

  Saba Fatima said that he was in touch with her from Boston, and used to send money for her daily needs. However, on October 6, she said he called up her father and “pronounced talaq without any reason”.

  “Since then, he has not been in touch with me and has blocked my number. I have tried to reach out to my mother-in-law, who lives in Dubai, and my sister-in-law who lives in London. They first assured me of justice, and later they also blocked my number,” she said.

Monopolies

• Anti-trust suits notwithstanding, Google, Facebook on Biden transition team

  Facebook and Google officials have been taken on as part of the team that is helping the new US administration effect its transition to power.

• Financial Terms in License Agreements [Ed: "Intellectual Property Licensing" is nonsensical propaganda; what they mean is submission to monopolies based on the fiction/lie that ideas are "property"]

  This chapter in the forthcoming casebook Intellectual Property Licensing and Transactions: Theory and Practice (2020, forthcoming), discusses the financial terms of IP licensing agreements including fixed payments, running royalties, sublicensing income, milestone payments, equity compensation and cost reimbursement, as well as most-favored and audit clauses. Numerous areas of recent controversy are addressed including the establishment of royalty rates through the entire market value rule (EMVR) versus the smallest salable patent practicing unit (SSPPU) rule, royalties for bundled rights, rules of thumb discredited by the courts, royalty escalation clauses and more. Examples are drawn primarily from biotechnology, high-tech and copyright licensing practice.

• Patents

  • Olha que coisa mais linda! INPI Brazil launched the English and Spanish versions of its website [Ed: This patent office gives it away; it doesn't work for its country but for multinationals]

    INPI Brazil highlighted that the new versions are addressed to foreigners with the goal of sharing relevant content on IP and disseminating information about its activities.

    In this way, INPI Brazil expects to expand the international scope of its services as well as to promote further partnerships to foster innovation and the creation of IP assets.

    The new versions are still in beta phase. Thus, further improvements may be expected.

  • German Bundestag Approves Ratification Bill on the Unified Patent Court Agreement

    The European Patent Office (EPO) is ready to register the first Unitary Patents. For Unitary Patents to become available, the UPCA has to enter into force which requires the ratification by 13 of the 25 participating EU Member States, including France, Germany and Italy. In Germany, the UPC bill will now be submitted to the German upper house (Bundesrat) for approval later this year. Once the German ratification procedure is complete, it’s anticipated that the final preparatory steps could be taken to set up the Unitary Patent Court in 2021. The UPC could then start its work in 2022.

  • UPC – Progress on German ratification

    The EPO has welcomed the news, explaining that “in Germany, the UPC bill will now be submitted to the German upper house (Bundesrat) for approval later this year. Once the German ratification procedure is complete, it’s anticipated that the final preparatory steps could be taken to set up the Unitary Patent Court in 2021. The UPC could then start its work in 2022.”

  • “The German parliament’s quick UPC solution is risky” [Ed: This is not a solution at all and it'll backfire on Germany and its credibility worldwide]

    Following a recent vote by the German parliament, the UPC could go into a provisional application period. Politically, this is a good sign. By opening a new unified court, continental Europe would demonstrate its ability to act as a community. But the danger of another constitutional complaint still hangs over the fast-developing project.

  • Around the IP Blogs [Ed: Well, this links to some patently false 'news' about UPC as might be expected from Team UPC; IP Kat speaks of "threats of new constitutional complaints, which might stop the project altogether." The threat is the UPC itself (an attack on the constitution), not complaints seeking to uphold the Rule of Law.]

    The German Bundestag has approved draft legislation to ratify the Unified Patent Court Agreement and this news hit the IP Blogosphere. ManagingIP, the European IP Helpdesk, the HGF blog, and the Juve Patent Blog each shared their opinion regarding the future of the UPC, including threats of new constitutional complaints, which might stop the project altogether.

  • FOSS Patents: Two new FRAND complaints filed with U.S. district courts: Lenovo v. Nokia (N.D. Cal.) and Ericsson v. Samsung (E.D. Tex.)

    Within four days of each other, two FRAND complaints have been filed in district court. One of them takes one aspect of the ongoing Nokia v. Lenovo standard-essential patent (SEP) dispute to the Northern District of California, and the other ushers in a “sequel” to an earlier Ericsson v. Samsung patent spat. At this stage–with the ink barely being dry on those complaints–I primarily just wish to make the complaints available here and provide some high-level information. When the defendants have answered (or moved to dismiss), I’ll go into more detail. Both appear to be driven by the notion that a good offense is sometimes the best defense.

  • 2020 Patent Exam – Are you Smarter than a 2L?

    At the University of Missouri, my patent law class is practice based – with students drafting claims, rejecting claims, responding to office actions, and participating in a patent law moot court competition. The class is pretty much fully packed. Still, I also give them a short final exam to ensure sure that they have learned the basics. This year’s exam is based upon an actual pending patent application for the Boss Hammer. Note – I played with the actual facts and claims a bit to make it all more straightforward.

  • COVID-19 Vaccines: Patent Ownership and the Barriers to Equitable Access

    The race to develop vaccines for COVID-19 has edged closer to its finishing line with at least three candidates announcing positive results from their vaccine trials. While this may appear to be the light at the end of the tunnel, the focus now shifts towards equally challenging issues of availability, accessibility, and affordability of vaccines. In this post, I discuss the vaccines developed by Moderna, Pfizer-BioNTech and AstraZeneca-Oxford, the complex ownership status of their intellectual property, the bilateral pre-purchase deals struck with higher-income countries and their implications on the Global South.

    [....]

    On 9th November, US Pharma giant Pfizer and German biotech firm BioNTech became the first to announce that ‘BNT162b2,’ the vaccine developed through their collaborative efforts, had shown over 90% effectiveness after the conclusion of Phase III trials. They will be supplying 50 million doses of one of the first ever messenger RNA-based vaccines by the end of 2020 and 1.3 billion doses by 2021. While no safety hazards have been noted, the vaccines will require ultra-cold storage at below -70 degree Celsius temperature and will only survive for 24 hours at refrigerator temperature (2-8 degrees Celsius). It is priced at a hefty price of $39 (nearly INR 3000). Today, UK gave an emergency approval to this vaccine.

    A week later, US-based Moderna declared that its mRNA-1273, another mRNA-based vaccine, had shown 95% effectiveness. It is set to be priced at $25-37 (approx. INR 1900-2800) per dose depending on quantities purchased. Similar to Pfizer-BioNTech, this vaccine will have to be stored frozen at -20 degrees Celsius. However, it may be kept at refrigerator temperature for a month making downstream transportation relatively easier.

    The highly anticipated AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine, AZD1222, claims 70% efficacy as per interim data, a figure that is estimated to increase to 90% if the dosage is altered. Unlike the other two vaccines, this one utilizes a genetically modified common-cold virus. What makes the Oxford vaccine an attractive candidate is its price, which, following a no-profit pledge by AstraZeneca, is to be capped at $3 (approx. INR 222) per dose. It is also capable of storage at normal refrigerator temperature giving it a logistical edge over the other two.

    A few other candidates are Russia’s Sputnik V and vaccines being developed by Sanofi-GlaxoSmithKlien, J&J, and Novavax.

  • Prison for over 200 fraudulent Chinese patent applications yielding 900,000 RMB in government awards

    According to a news report by 知识产权界, on December 3, 2020, the People’s Court of Shehong City, Sichuan heard the corruption and bribery case of defendant Guo, and the corruption case of defendants Chen, Wu, and Wu . The court of first instance sentenced Guo to 6 years and 8 months imprisonment, fined Guo 400,000 yuan, and ordered him to refund the economic losses caused by his corruption. Guo had fraudulently filed and obtained 231 utility model patents and then applied for awards of 3,000 RMB (~$459 USD) each from Shehong County Government’s intellectual property award funds.

    The court found that Guo and others used Shehong local enterprises, farmers, technology companies and others to file utility model patents in their names. After the government awarded the 3,000 RMB to these companies or individuals, they would transfer the RMB to Guo. The Court also found that Guo accepted bribes totaling 251,625 RMB.

    Shehong, like many cities, offers awards for patent grants. Specifically, the Shehong County Authorized Patent Incentive Measures (Trial)” (Shefu Office [2011] No. 91) offered 5,000 RMB per invention patent grant, 3,000 RMB per utility model patent grant, and 1000 RMB per design patent grant. In comparison, Guangzhou currently offers up to 3,000 RMB per Chinese invention patent but no awards designs or utility models. Note that foreign patents grants yield 20,000 RMB awards in Guangzhou. (See 广州市知识产权工作专项资金管理办法 for more details). In contrast, Shanghai is more generous with up to 50,000 RMB/foreign patent. (See 上海市专利资助办法 for more details).

  • Software Patents

    • SmileDirectClub Patent on Business Is Invalidated by Judge

• Trademarks

  • As Face Masks, Shields Become a Fashion Category of Their Own, Brands Are Rushing to File Trademark Applications

    The U.S. market for face masks is positively booming. Projected to reach $6 billion in 2021, according to investment bank KeyBanc Capital Markets, companies are placing their bets on demand for not only utilitarian face coverings but decorative, and even luxury-level ones, as the item of COVID-centric protective gear has swiftly evolved into a fashion ornament – albeit a mandatory one in most jurisdictions – and created a new category of accessory in the process, one that is being compared to the likes of “it” bags and the latest trend in coveted sneakers.
    Since the outset of the global health pandemic, the notion of logo-laden, designer face masks has become increasingly less taboo, and as the practical need to wear a mask endures, the attitude of many consumers has shifted. The result? A new emphasis on the fashion aspects of these necessary accessories in addition to the purely functional ones. “Face coverings might be a matter of practicality in the era of COVID-19,” the Los Angeles Times’ Lindzi Scharf wrote in September. “But for the 1 percent, fancy masks and shields have become a new opportunity to project individual status.”
    “This kind of evolution is natural. It may be inevitable. It is the kind of human impulse fashion is built to serve,” the New York Times’ Vanessa Friedman asserted in April.
    Against that background and in light of a drastic drop in sales of many of their other offerings, fashion brands – from burgeoning young upstarts to established names in the high fashion arena – have clamored to enter the face mask market to meet mounting consumer demand.

• Copyrights

  • MediaFire Counters La Liga’s ‘Baseless’ Piracy Accusations

    A few weeks ago, Spanish football league La Liga nominated several sites and services for the US Trade Representative’s upcoming ‘notorious markets’ report. The Texan company MediaFire was highlighted in the cyberlocker category, characterized as a pirate service. In a late reply, MediaFire counters the claims, stating that they are inaccurate and unsupported.

  • Pirate IPTV Provider Must Pay DISH $15.8m in Damages

    Back in January, US broadcaster DISH Network filed a sealed complaint targeting the Florida-based owner of a pirate IPTV service operating under several brand names. After almost a year, the case has now been concluded. In addition to complying with a permanent injunction, defendant Robert Reich has agreed to pay DISH more than $15.8m in damages.